The Snow Falls and the Village is Overflowing with Children (GLOG Race-as-Class: Fay)

I've recently become enamored with the implied setting of the Cloak-and-Sword system; I love the emphasis on gentility and social interaction over grotty dungeoncrawling that it brings. It's really fascinating! I've been turning over the role of poetics in games recently. With that in mind, and since there's only one other race-as-class (update! there's a second!) for the system, I wanted to throw my own hat into the ring. Credit where credit is due that this is liberally, liberally inspired by this lovely fairy.

 

Hugo Hoppener

 

Fay

As the galloping sylphs, undines, gnomes, and salamanders are to the stuff of matter, you are made of the stuff of the emotions of men. A storm of raw moods, whims, and desires, wrapped in a form of face and feet and hands.

 

Fleur's Dolls

Choose an emotion, the more specific the better.

This is a good start, if you can't think of anything else

 

 

This emotion makes up the very essence of your being, and your appearance always wears your heart on your sleeve. If your body is destroyed, you explode from it in a rush of perfumed winds. While your soul is loose, you must always act in accord with your ruling emotion, you are incorporeal, you cannot lift things greater than 5 lbs, and ALL who see your uncovered face hold Esprit for you whether you like it or not. If you are lovely, they will wish to possess you, and if you are fearful, they will wish to bind you.

Children of Clay

Your body is made of the stuff of nature, drawn together into human form. Pick a region. You may look at the overland map for the region, and are aware of all major landmarks and the comings, locations, and goings of all notable personages within it. You may travel at the speed of the wind through your region, and can camouflage so perfectly as to be invisible as long as you are still. Your body is obviously unfleshly, reflecting the environment as well as your ruling emotion, and is either beautiful or terrible. If your body is destroyed, then your soul may sleep beneath the soil for a month and a day to reconstruct it. 

L'intrigue

In order to keep a humanlike temperament and form, to be more than a single raw feeling, you MUST keep etiquette. According to ancient compacts with humankind you have authority equal to a viscount, and must show deference to those above you. You must always announce your arrival to a household. You cannot step on holy ground or touch anyone of the cloth. You must always announce before you do violence to someone. You must always say your pleases and thank yous, and give upright apologies. Each time you defy one of these, you lose 1 max hp.

Who Art in Heaven

The touch of worked iron, and the sound of bells, always deal 1 damage to you per round.

Oakwood Green

You can craft the natural stuff of your region into an object of any material and make, spending one hour per slot of bulk. You can even make an animal the size of a horse or smaller with a week of work, though they are always docile. These objects always crumble back into their stuff a day after they leave the hands of you or someone under your Esprit.

Los Estrallas

A twenty-fifth hour exists for you, the witching hour between midnight and one. Living beings become grey and motionless during it, but you're free to roam around during, speaking with the secret councils of ghosts and elementals which creep out. You are unable to interact with living things, or what they possess, except for anything or anyone who is lost.

Tongues

Once a day, you may control your soul slipping out to make all who gaze at you save vs becoming overcome by your ruling emotion. You regain your use upon the coming of the twenty-fifth hour. You cannot use this during the Lord's Day or holy days, and it counts as laying your hands upon those of the cloth for L'intrigue.

Her Masters Voice

Any who consume food or drink made by Oakwood Green fall under your Esprit, and your glamour. They are ruled by your ruling emotion as you are. They must be exorcised, or kept on holy ground until the twenty-fifth hour passes, to be freed.

Mortuary

Anyone who has been dead for a week or less, who is buried in the ground of your region, can be returned by you as a doppelganger. They have the same appearance and memories, but are NOT the same person; the original body still molders in the ground. They are under your Esprit, and ruled by your ruling emotion; they are also deathly afraid of holy places, and harmed by Who Art in Heaven same as you. If you lose your body, then they die; when they die, they crumble back into the stuff of your region.

The Draw Room

If you may, you may choose to bind yourself to a house or other human structure. You are under the Esprit of whomever owns it, but are no longer required to show deference to anyone else. You may do violence surreptitiously and skulk about unannounced. All benefits and effects of Children of Clay now apply to the indoor map, rather than the outdoor map and its domain which was your former remit. You can never go back. If the building burns, so do you.  

Modern Magic: Shades of the Soul

I've had a modern urban fantasy setting cooking in my mind for a while - it's what I do since I don't truly have the worldbuilder's constitution, I keep a couple pots simmering constantly adding and removing parts. Here's one attempt at a magic system (ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh), with pieces graverobbed from the charnel depths of the lovely darkness. 

 

Source Unknown

 

Perception and Reality

The soul is the sum total of what a person is, fluorescing within the breast. It animates the clay, sharpens the dull razor of instinct, processes and exudes what one might call "higher thought". But the soul is incapable of interacting with reality directly. Reality, flowing fractal chaos, must be filtered through sensory organs and manipulated with heavy limbs. It's necessary, of course. Top thanatologists don't agree on much, but they do know that a soul can't survive cut off from a physical medium for very long - reality qua reality is too harsh, it dissipates like gas. Why is all this important? A Magician is someone who extrudes a piece of their soul into a separate being that can sense and interact with a part of reality directly, without a physical intermediary. The process isn't as complicated as you'd expect.

How to Become a Magician

In order to split your soul apart, you need to make a soul gem to hold the severed piece in. This is the generic parlance, for this device has almost as many names as there are magicians. Construction is very simple. First, take a piece of precious stone or metal. This is what the soul will actually soak into and be held in. Obviously, the larger the piece the more soul it can hold. Surround it in a shell of orichalc, the more elaborately textured the better. This is what wicks a piece of the soul out of the flesh and into the gem's core.

Take something sharp and open yourself up. Slip the gem inside, nestle it softly against your organs. Close the gap. Endure twenty-four to seventy-two hours of relentless shaking, shivering, pains, fever, vomiting, insomnia, hallucinations as your being is split apart at the most fundamental level. Rise from your sweat-soaked sheets with a second shape in the room with you.

  

Francis Bacon

Spirits

The soul gem is a lens through which the soul-chunk is projected directly into reality without the need for a physical intermediary. The resulting apparition is a spirit. A separate soul made to interlace with a spectrum of the chaos of reality, an independently-thinking entity yet bound inexorably to their creator, a ghost at the edge of vision. 

The core material which the soul gem is made of is vitally important, because it determines what aspects of reality the spirit interacts with - or, in more prosaic terms, its form, function, and personality. A Bismuth spirit will have very different traits than a Obsidian spirit, and so on and so forth. 

There are many, many side effects. Opening your soul up widens perception, so that you can see ghostly and invisible things, including the spirits of other magicians. Of course, that means they can see yours as well - you can try to hide it, stuff it inside the contours of your body, and it'll work well enough so long as you don't mind some tremors and tics and words out of your mouth not being your own. Then there are the emotional fluctuations, some deadened and others exaggerated, that come from being hyperfocused on a specific aspect of reality. Then there are the physical health issues that come from having your soul split, and a foreign object lodged in your chest cavity. And these effects are all drastic enough with just one soul gem - because of course many wizards choose to eventually give themselves multiple, and become sickly weeping messes as their many souls flare and make the world around them putty.

 

Soul Types,

because there are many. Too many to list here, but here is a guide to what is most common, well known, proven.

 

Bismuth

The Haunting

is the color of delirium, passion, and self-indulgence. The madness of extreme youth and old age, drool pouring down the chest, a gentle hand wiping it away. The lowest places of the spine, innerzone pool of amniotic fluid watched by hungry lizards. Four straight right angles which nevertheless form into alien shapes, wretched and wrong. Hollow things, and holes, and what whistles through holes. Opening and closing them, passing through, soothing their pains.

Obsidian

Richard Müller

is the color of honor, duty, and self-reliance. Wind-up obedience, the deaf blank face. Unstoppable forces and immovable objects, plated armor as heavy again as you are, the screech of rotors across road, tunnel, sky. Chunky tarantula legs and shiny beetle carapace, nice ox-leather gloves still steaming with breath and sweat. Insulation within and without, smooth and free of gaps.

Pearl

Source Unknown

is the color of yearning, detachment, and fear. Boring a hole in the wall to watch your neighbor undress. Buzzing wires and the sickly glow of screens in a dark room, sweat all over. The unheimlich, imperfect doppelgangers, folding yourself up into a cabinet full of mirrors, everything draining out of you thin and drizzly. An aquarium overflowing with coral clinging desperately to itself. Doors left unlocked out of carelessness.

Silver

Paolo Soleri

is the color of scrupulosity, austerity, and authoritarianism. Crisp bedsheets and white noise so loud it shakes the plaque off your teeth. The patient etherized upon the table, razor scalpel needle talons, a high-quality wooden desk with an expensive pen laying on it. Files, vials, labels in a sorting system only its writer understands. Glass walls and never never any privacy.

Ruby 

 

Gustave Moreau

is the color of grief, ambition, and ruin. It's history in all its torrid wreckage and glory. Glorious and terrible, ten-thousand angels descending with swords in hand, Kleio's sweeping sickle. Hot irons, purring engines, transmuting base matter into things and tools. Steaming vats of dye, rugs that take years to make, holding a lighter to it and tearing at it with your nails and teeth.

Emerald

This Person

is the color of passion, imagination, and dependency. Filigree, twisted wrought iron and lace doilies. Dollhouses and childish crafts, and slim fingers plucking the legs off a fly. Dappled sunlight through thick glass casting broken shapes of thick golden light on the floor. Shearing apart taxidermied fur, revealing the stuffing and wooden skeleton underneath, and stitching it back together in new shapes. Frightened stone statues by a manicured pond.

Sapphire 

Imre Reiner

is the color of resentment, appetite, and vainglory. The burn of alcohol sliding down the throat and inflamed red faces, orgies all through the night and firing squads at dawn. The reek of tobacco and sulfur, a dozen legs tramping down a hallway at once with a sound like thunder. Dogs and horses, chuffing, inured to the roar of artillery, an octopus crushing its prey to death, malformed and painful horns.

Gold

Elagabalus

is the color of security, wisdom, and self-loathing. Heavenly black iron cutting apart the earth and caressed like a lover, still cooling. Dirt that you can't get out from under your fingernails, ancient boughs groaning under their own weight. A tightly-held fist putting back down what it called up with no small amount of pride. Poisoned flesh melting into pristine bone, heavy chains and a heavier keyring.

 

Practical Matters

Well, how are you supposed to use this in play?

 

 

The idea, at least, is to blend FKR-ish/"storygamey" methods of magical expression with ultra-simulationist lethal violence and wound/hit tables. I find the frission that those rules express side-by-side to each other, at least in theory, to be quite compelling. I don't have those written up yet because I'd most likely stitch together extant rulesets rather than creating something from scratch. Nothing is original and everything in plagiarism, and I very much enjoy making disparate pieces fit together.

If you're wondering about the imagery of the colors of the soul, I wrote up a whole extensive table to clarify the vibes. I ended up deciding to write impressionistically around it because it seemed to me that simply droning on about longwinded lists of associations and spell effects would kill the magic, so to speak.

This post has gone on long enough, but I like the many implications having soul gems opens up. What happens when a wizard dies? when you stick one into an animal, or object? when you make one out of multiple materials? These questions, God willing, I'll have the time and will to expand upon in the future.
 

Simple Tiger's Dream (GLOG Class: Assassin)

For the Assassin bandwagon

Lesser men than you skulk in the shadows with knives and poison like spiders under a log. When day shows his face they cringe and flee from the light, mere murderous cowards. You are neither - does a predator murder its prey?

Juan Manuel Castro Prieto

Assassin

A: What The Hammer, Catlike Tread, +1 to hit

B: Terrible Shadow, Cartilage System

C: Shear, +1 to hit

D: Utter Incompetence

What The Hammer: You could cut a man's throat with a glass of water, or stave his skull in with a thimble. All improvised weapons in your hands count as a light weapon, regardless of their size or practicality. At C template, they do +2 damage.

Catlike Tread: Your footsteps are always as quiet as slippers on a marble floor. You can leap gaps a person could with a runup without a runup, and scale things that they could with equipment and preparation without it.

Terrible Shadow: Whenever you want to be feared by people with equal or less HD than you, you are; in combat this equates to a [HD] malus to their morale rolls. Figures in positions of authority always hold at least begrudging respect towards you.

Cartilage System: Your body is far looser than it appears; you can conceal yourself wherever a child could.

Shear: Your arms are like terrible scissors - whenever you would kill someone you can choose to just maim or cripple them in some way. The wounds trend towards the quick and horrible; oftentimes all that's needed is a message.

Utter Incompetence: Your body cracks in peoples' minds like a calving glacier. With your gaze you can make a person with equal or less HD than you make a morale check to save vs unconsciousness. If they have 1 HD, this instead becomes a morale save vs death.

Shining Rainbow Vehicles (GLOG Class: Magician)

 A remix of the Wonder-Worker from the eminent Locheil, adjusted for my own setting preferences.

The Universal Sage walked down to the earth and chose seven people to be his apprentices. A soldier, a charcoal burner, a farmer, a thief, a sailor, a hermit, and a prince were they, and the Sage attempted to teach each the secrets of magic. However, each of them only partially understood what he taught, and abused their misunderstanding of magic. Disappointed, the Universal Sage broke magic so that none may wield it like they once did, and walked back to his palace above the universe. 

You, wonder-worker, make do with the scraps of scraps.

Source

THE WONDER WORKER

Starting Items: Travelling clothing, Grimoire (1 Slot), three Implements from any combination of the lists (see below). 

A - Crown, Working Wonders, School, +1MD

B - Bag of Holding, +1MD

C - Caution, +1MD

D - Artisan, +1MD

Crown

You can only do direct magic inside your ‘Crown’, which is [templates] * 10 paces. 

Effects that would leave your Crown falter and fail unless otherwise stated. Effects must originate within your Crown. 

Working Wonders

To work wonders, combine a Word, and up to [templates] Implements.

Words are often found as sacred glyphs wrought in platinum, in the books of other wizards or painted on the walls of ancient ruins. When in a place of great knowledge, you can roll 1d8 on the Word List of the associated School.

Your Words are kept in your Grimoire. You can only use Words if you have a physical representation of them in your Inventory (usually in, say, your Grimoire). 

A Grimoire has no practical limit on the number of Words it can contain. 

It takes a day to copy one word into a Grimoire. 

A new Grimoire costs 100g.

Implements must be found in the world, until you can make your own. 

School

Your School determines what Words you know.

Roll 2d6 on your School’s Word List at Template A, and 1d8 each level thereafter. 

Bag of Holding

Gain 4 extra Inventory Slots.

Caution

You can re-roll 1MD a day and take either result. 

Artisan

You can now make Implements. 

You can take an otherwise mundane object and prepare it with a day long ritual.

Now, take the prepared item, and cast a total of 20MD on it - across as much time as you like. 

It is now an Implement - if it doesn’t have a written effect below, then you can suggest an effect. 

Magic Dice, Mishaps, Dooms

You roll MD to make spells. They return on 1-3 and expend on 4-6, as usual. 

Mishaps happen on doubles, Dooms happen on triples. They’re themed around whatever Word you were using at the time. 

Once you’ve started on the Doom of [Word], whenever you roll triples again, you advance towards it. Dooms have three steps…

1. Cosmetic change themed around [word].

2. Transformation themed around [word].

3. Messy demise with collateral damage, themed around [word].

A given spell has [sum] points of power - dealing [sum] damage, reducing [sum] damage, etc.

Things beyond just damage allow creatures with the same or more HD than you to save. 

Schools:

The First Apprentice

Who shut himself in his keep.

Color: Red

Symbols: Castle, demonic mask, forge

Classic Implements: Horn, Wand 

1. Fuel

2. Smoke

3. Bullets

4. Fear 

5. Locks

6. Roar

7. Metal

8. Walls

The Second Apprentice

Who burned herself alive.

Color: Orange

Symbols: Flames, series of towers, word squares

Classic Implements: Orb, Pure Salt

1. Eye

2. Glass

3. Dawn

4. Writing

5. Paper

6. Mirror

7. Fire

8. Light

 

The Third Apprentice

Who was murdered, ignobly.

Color: Yellow

Symbols: Spiral, grain sheaf, fat smiling sun, pitchfork

Classic Implements: Rope, Gauntlet

1. Grain

2. Heat

3. Strength

4. Fatigue

5. Livestock

6. Boulder

7. Distance

8. Sun

The Fourth Apprentice

Who twisted into a terrible beast.

Color: Green

Symbols: Pillar, frogs, grasping hand

Classic Implements: Lockbox, Alembic

1. Slime

2. Frog

3. Acid

4. Disease

5. Healing

6. Mud

7. Water

8. Life

The Fifth Apprentice

Who still races across the sky.

Color: Blue

Symbols: Swans, waving flags, clouds

Classic Implements: Paint, Lots and Tables

1. Fish

2. Luck

3. Ship

4. Rain

5. Clouds

6. Flight

7. Wind

8. Speed

The Sixth Apprentice

Who dug beneath the world.

Color: Indigo

Symbols: Blinded eye, pits, a capering body

Classic Implements: Hammer, Seeing Stone

1. Dreams

2. Poison

3. Magnetism

4. Monsters

5. Pressure

6. Darkness

7. Stone

8. Thoughts

The Seventh Apprentice

Who became a great tyrant.

Color: Purple

Symbols: Crown, wings, maps 

Classic Implements: Mask, Bow

1. Silk

2. Music

3. Gem

4. Awe

5. Horn

6. Gold
   

7. Royalty
   

8. Dragon

Implements

Implements take up 1 Inventory Slot unless otherwise stated.

1d20 Implements with Direct Effects:

1. Wand - Create or conjure [word] at a distance. 

2. Rod - Make a strike charged with [word]. Add 2 to [sum]. 

3. Staff - Fire a cone-shaped blast of [word]. 2 slots.

4. Sword - Cut through [word]. 2 slots. 

5. Orb - Get a vision of nearby [word], or something in nearby [word].

6. Horn - Affect all in your Crown with [word]. 

7. Bell - Drive out all [word] from your Crown. 

8. Lockbox - Draw in [word], sealing it in the lockbox. Contains 1 thing at a time.

9. Hammer - Break [word] with a strike. 

10. Mask - You are invisible to creatures of [word], and [word] itself. 

11. Seeing Stone - Look through [word] in your Crown. 

12. Lots and Tables - Speak with [word] for a time. 

13. Alembic - With an hour’s work, create a Potion of [word]. Takes 2 slots.

14. Gauntlet - Move [word] within your Crown. 

15. Rope - Contain [word], preventing it from moving. 

16. Mirror - Reflect or deflect [word] while the mirror is aloft.

17. Key - Insert the key to open a door through [word].

18. Pure Salt - Make a circle to summon a spirit of [word]. Consumable, has 6 uses.

19. Paint - Imbue the wearer with the properties of [word]. Consumable, has 6 uses.

20. Bow - Create an arrow of [word], which can be fired as a normal arrow even outside of your Crown.

Consumable implements vanish upon use, necessitating finding or buying more. 

1d20 Implements with Modifying Effects

1. Blackberry - Increase [sum] by 1 when you're chewing it. Consumable. Start with 10.

2. Flint Knife - Cut yourself with the knife, adding the damage you take to [sum]. 

3. Gourd of Clay Figurines - Affect up to [dice] extra targets, but reduce [sum] by the number of targets.

4. Braided Cord - Delay an effect for up to [sum] minutes, setting a condition upon which it triggers. You don’t need to be conscious for it to trigger. If the time passes without it triggering, the effect simply doesn’t occur. 

5. Empty Vessel - While the vessel is open, the [sum] of spells affecting you is lowered by 3. 

6. Bronze Idol - Produces a foot wide “bubble” of your Crown, allowing you to affect things near it. Stops being yours if you spend more than a day away from it. 

7. Paper Veil - Increase [sum] by 3 when no other wizards are present. 

8. Spirit Flask - Increase [sum] by 3 when drunk, but mishaps are more severe. 

9. Furled Bloom - Spells overspill to things near them. Consumable. Start with 6.

10. Blood Red Root - Increase [sum] by however much HP you're missing. Consumable. Start with 6.

11. Black Linen Hood - When wearing this, people in your Crown must save to realise effects originate from you. 

12. Loyal Hound - A good dog, specially trained. Always counts as being in your Crown, and can transfer your effects to things touching them, unless you give them reason to no longer trust you. Takes up to 4 slots if you have to carry them. 

13. Fungal Clump - Replace [word] in this spell with Mushroom. Consumable. Start with 6. 

14. Hero’s Shot - Allows spells to affect the inside of people and animals. Consumable. Start with 6.

15. Oricalchum Coins - Spend it 1-to-1 to increase [sum]. Consumable. Start with 10.

16. Horn Cane - Allows you to affect horned animals you can see, even if they’re not in your Crown. 

17. Fossilized Skull - The effect repeats [dice] rounds in a row. 2 slots.

18. Iron Fishhook- When this is stuck in you, reduce all [sum] by 3, but increase all [dice] by 1. Deals 1d3 nonlethal damage when pulled out. 

19. Gold Medallion - Increase [sum] by 2 when in direct sunlight.

20. Black Powder - Causes [word] to violently explode. Consumable. Start with 6. 

 

This is not an exhaustive list, of course. Stranger implements do more numinous things. 

For example…

1d10 Taboo Implements

1. Glass Needle - Damage yourself with this needle, losing Max HP equal to the damage. Permanently increase all [sum] by the Max HP lost. You lose this bonus if you lose the needle. 

2. Glass Cat’s Eye- Sleeping people you can see are inside your Crown, at any distance. 

3. Cyclopean Eye - Mummified and leathery, the size of a lemon. If you know a fearful or shameful secret of a Wizard, their eyes are considered to be inside your Crown, at any distance. The only escape is making the secret public. 

4. Dried Tongue - When you see another Wizard use a Word, you can mangle that Word into a related one - Fire to Smoke, for example, or Iron to Lead. Has 6 uses, then burns to ash. 

5. Wizard Femur - Add 4 to [sum] if harming another Wizard. 2 slots. 

6. Pearly Grasshopper - For each day gone without sleep, increase [sum] by 1.

7. Blasted Heartwood - Replace [word] in this spell with blackfire. Blackfire makes no sound, light, or heat, invisibly burning things to ash

8. Ivory Idol - Infuse a corpse with [word], giving it motion and a strange power. You command the resulting shamblers. 

9. Warped Nails - Your Crown also originates from any body, living or dead, that has 3 or more of these nails in it. You start with 8. 

10. Wizard Skull - You can hide a [word] inside this, and then recall it to you at any time, from any distance. Allows you to sneak words into places where they take your Grimoire off you. If you don’t have paper ready, the Word brands onto your skin, dealing 1d6 damage.