Death's Cousin (A Dungeon for GLAUGUST)

Surprise, I'm writing stuff for Glorantha now. Bitch. However, this dungeon should be easy enough to adapt for any setting which might have your earth mother goddess types. This is for Glaugust, specifically Prime's prompt for a deicide dungeon.

Typhon, Tarquinia Tombs

This nameless vault was built early in the First Age to safeguard a rare and terrible killing tool of the powers of Earth. Over the long deluge of centuries, the temple above crumbled, the priestesses left, and the sacred grounds were forgotten. This dungeon can be put anywhere Ernalda is or once was worshipped, which is to say a significant chunk of central Genertela where everything of relevance is happening anyways. Likewise, the reasons you might come here are varied. Perhaps you've been hired by the Lunar Empire to capture a prized Orlanthi barbarian artifact, and use it against them before they can use it against you. Perhaps a minor Esrolian noblewoman has learned of it in dusty archives, and wants it for herself without going through the wealthy, power-hungry ruling Grandmothers. Perhaps you just have a treasure map and few scruples. It should be made known that this dungeon is a death trap; it should also be made known that it is not a negadungeon, and the prize within is genuine and true. [future purplecthulhu note: as I write this out it's obvious to me that you should probably run this as some kind of funnel].

Map by the exemplary Paratime

 

General Dungeon Info: squares are 5ft. The whole dungeon is suffused with the pungent, sulfurous smell of the gas from 2. Doors are heavy stone and unlocked, except for the double doors to 29, 30, and 31, which are fragrant wood covered in sheets of hammered copper. The rows of dots represent barred copper gates. Secret doors are opened with cleverly-hidden buttons placed near the floor or ceiling. Stairs always descend deeper.

Areas 6-24 demarcate the maze, walls covered with frescos of deep wilderness, wild animals, and reveling dancers and corpses. Random encounters are only checked for while inside the maze. All random encounters are hostile to anyone who's not either an Earth priestess of some stripe or directly escorted by one.

Random encounters (not including stats because I'm lazy, square up)

1. 1d2 painted saber-toothed tigers, leaping out of the walls [painted enemies circumvent the cramped space by becoming 2D at will, and traveling through the art. They are immune to mundane harms while like this, but must emerge from the walls partially or fully in order to attack] 
2. 1d6+1 painted venomous snakes, leaping out of the walls
3. 2d6! painted maenads, leaping out of the walls
4. The statue (only encountered once someone either sees or passes the statue at 9. More information there).

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1. The entrance, a spiral staircase that bores 500ft down into the earth. Above, on the surface, the stair and temple ruins are now secluded in an elf grove. Watched vigilantly by 10 elven warriors camouflaged up in the trees, armed with bows and spears. They have little love for the fleshly human goddesses but are bound by ancient pacts and debts to guard this place. If defilers prove a tough fight, they'll beat a false retreat and then return to hunt the humans in the maze below. They are immune to the gas spewing from 2, and ignored by the painted guardians and statue, but do not know where traps are located. They refuse to pass 25a lest the holy place turn against them too.

2. Torches and lanterns flare bright in here. Sulfurous volcanic gas spews out from a copper grate in the center of the floor and causes hallucinations in any who breathe it in and fail a save. Those affected perceive the statues and frescos within as vivid, fearsome, and alive. If for whatever reason the grate is pulled out of the floor, the flow of gas increases and the atmosphere becomes unbreathable and explosive.

3. Three statues. From left to right: Maran Gor, the Strength of the Earth (armored, holding an axe and a maul); Esrola, the Bounty of the Earth (naked, pregnant, holding a cornucopia and a sheaf of grain); Ernalda, the Wisdom of the Earth (robed, crowned, holding a serpent and a spindle). Each has a skull in place of their face.

4.  Plain stone room with wooden benches and empty footlockers pushed against the walls.

5. Outer purificatory baths. Frescos on the wall of women bathing in rivers. A large, empty pool on the south side of the room 5 feet deep.

6a. 20ft deep spike pit, swinging open in response to at least 25lbs of weight. A hidden mechanism resets the trapdoor after 30 seconds.
b. as 6a.

7. A ginormous crushing block slams down from the ceiling. Save vs death. Cracked flooring and more-than-usual wear on the frescos give the trap away to watchful eyes. A lowered block trap blocks its corridor completely and slowly, agonizingly resets after 10 minutes. There is a slight delay to the trap so that it triggers only after one person has already passed it; if this splits the party, a random painted encounter springs out to savage the smaller group.

8a. as 6a.
b. Statues of Axe Polisher (smiling) and Axe Grinder (frowning), the minor tutelary goddesses of the dungeon. At the end of the hall, hanging on a peg is a large brass key to the gate at 22. If someone not an Earth priestess touches the key, the statues scream and immediately trigger a random encounter roll.

9. A huge statue of Babeester Gor, berserker daughter of Ernalda. Fanged, naked save for a belt of human hands, wielding dual axes. Huge, impassable unless you're foolish enough to try to crawl between her legs. After defilers either first look at her, pass through the detour passage around her, or open the secret door in the northwest, she animates and begins to stalk them. She plays by Weeping Angel rules, at least until she gets close enough to bury one of her axes in your skull.  

10. A steep, greased chute that descends 40ft into a wall of spikes, hidden by a trapdoor that swings open in response to at least 25lbs of weight.

11. as 6a.

12. as 6a, but the trapdoor has jammed open; the blue robes of an ancient skeleton have caught in the gears, and the corpse still hangs suspended. Besides the robes the skeleton also wears 100 lunars worth of jewelry; a sage would recognize the style as God Learner.

13. as 7.

14. as 6a.

15. Behind a locked copper gate, stone flowers grow out of the wall. A thick, dark green liquid slowly oozes out of them and collects in overflowing wood and stone bowls beneath. The liquid is a powerful psychedelic; besides hallucinating, those who drink it also gain a bonus to parlaying with and binding spirits of Earth and Darkness.

16. as 7.

17. as 6a.

18. as 6a.

19. as 15, but the liquid is frothy and reddish-pink. If drank, it's a medicine which guarantees a safe and healthful pregnancy and birth (no effect if the drinker is unable to bear a child).

20. as 7. 

21. Statues to more minor goddesses: Echo-Maker, Beer-Brewer, Copper-Layer

22. A locked copper gate. The key is in 8b.

23. A 10ft length of swirling unnatural darkness. Within it, copper chains hang from the ceiling and attempt to throttle any who pass through who are not an Earth priestess.

24. as 15, but there's no locked gate, and the liquid is oily and greenish-white. If drank, it's a powerful purgative that instantly, violently rids the body of any disease. It's also a deadly poison against creatures of Chaos.

25. Frescos on the wall of a peaceful grove. Sections a and b are divided by a shimmering silver curtain (worth 1000 lunars) held in place by a golden plate with an etching of a loom affixed to the ceiling (worth 200 lunars). Those who try to pass directly through the curtain rather than through 27 are attacked each round by an invisible, dagger-wielding force until they retreat. If the curtain is taken down the effect expands to fill the whole room, and can no longer be mitigated. 

26. A tapestry of a dense forest devoid of animal life. Study reveals it to depict the hidden body of Aldrya, goddess of the forest and mother of elves. This shrine was the gift to the elves in exchange for their protection of the place. Worth 1000 lunars, but a curse is placed on the thief that takes it from the shrine that marks them as a hated enemy of elfkind.

27. Inner purificatory baths. The 5ft deep pool taking up the southern half of the room is filled with hot, steamy water. Near the door to 25b, a chest with 10 folded green linen robes and pairs of wooden sandals, miraculously unaffected by the humidity.

28. Heaps and heaps of fine cloth fill the room, 10,000 lunars worth; a true hoard, although it would be exceedingly heavy and difficult to transport out of here. Working at a loom is the ancient priestess and sage Marane. Not undead, that would be Chaotic, just someone who has forgotten to pass on, deep in the womb of the earth where death is only sleep. She is dreamy, kindly, and very happy to have someone to talk to again. Marane is exceedingly knowledgeable in weaving, medicine, midwifery, the many gods and demons of the deep earth and underworld, and how to properly perform human sacrifice. However, she is also completely ignorant of history, and her long isolation has left her gullible. She knows how one may enter the inner sanctum of 31 without being attacked; why, you just need to perform the heroquest Funeral of Ernalda :). She even has the costumes you would need right in here! She also possesses the keys to 15 and 19 and will happily explain the effects of the various fountains.

If a hair on Marane's head is harmed, the cloth twists and transforms into a gigantic monstrous serpent. The full wrath of the painted guardians is unleashed on the defilers as soon as they step back into the maze; automatic encounters every turn.

29. Frescos of the many, many goddesses and spirits of the Earth, all with skull faces.

30. Two huge, stout lamia statues in this chamber frighten away any bound spirits not aligned with Earth. The doors to the south have a simple etching: a Death rune inside an Earth rune.

31. Unlike the rest of the complex, this room is a natural cave, a hollow of sharp glassy stone. Axe Polisher and Axe Grinder wait inside incarnate, two huge, spindly Earth elementals with long, long bladed flint fingers. They are the last line of defense; anyone who enters the chamber without performing the Funeral of Ernalda beforehand, even an Earth priestess, are immediately rushed by them.

Beyond them, on a plain bloodstained altar, lies a knapped flint knife. This stone was taken from the same cave where the sword known as Death was hidden within and bears a modicum of that blade's terrible power. The knife ignores all warding magic, and kills spirits too. If you take it into a heroquest, it can kill a lot more.

There is a good reason why this knife is so jealously hidden, kept away from all but the most devoted daughters of the power of Earth. It is a tool to be used very delicately. All good Orlanthi know that the misuse of Death was what first let Chaos into the world.   

ON SLAAD (HEXPOST GUESTPOST)

"Before the Gates there sat

On either side a formidable shape;

The one seem'd Woman to the waste, and fair,

But ended foul in many a scaly fould

Voluminous and vast, a Serpent arm'd

With mortal sting: about her middle round

A cry of Hell Hounds never ceasing bark'd

With wide Cerberian mouths full loud, and rung

A hideous Peal: yet, when they list, would creep,

If aught disturb'd thir noyse, into her woomb,

And kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howl'd,

Within unseen.   Farr less abhorrd than these

Vex'd Scylla bathing in the Sea that parts

Calabria from the hoarce Trinacrian shore:

Nor uglier follow the Night-Hag, when call'd

In secret, riding through the Air she comes

Lur'd with the smell of infant blood, to dance

With Lapland Witches, while the labouring Moon

Eclipses at thir charms."

 

A guest post for Josie's Hex setting.

 

A slaad's attempt at human features

 

    The fuming seas of Limbo rest deep below in the atrament, underneath the gelid antisun and the surface of the underside. Among its constantly-shifting peaks and valleys sit the sprawling, warring domains of the slaad, also known as demons or devils. For millennia they've meddled with and terrorized the peoples of the underside, shaping countless bizarre species of animal and humanoid alike. The few times they have breached the Interdark, the World Above has trembled with fear. But now, with the power of rational inquiry and materialist analysis, we have finally become able to accurately report just what these bizarre creatures are like.

 

    Above all else, slaad are master sculptors of the flesh. Biology is their delight and plaything. Though they have the capacity to look like almost anything, they have a strong preference for forms resembling amphibians, proto-reptiles, and bony fish; tetrapodomorpha freshly crawled out of the seas. In their eyes everything else is just experimentation. The sole exception are human features, which are useful tools for delicate manipulation (both hands and faces can be used for delicate manipulation). The degree to which slaad adopt parts of the human varies wildly, but as a general rule they get better at maintaining them in not-too-horribly-uncanny equilibrium with age.

 

A slaad extending its human face for diplomacy :)

 

    Slaad, however, are just as accomplished technicians of the soul as they are artists of the body. While thought, memory, logic, and other aspects of the mind are beyond them (in fact, even the most intelligent of slaad struggles mightily to understand theory of mind), they are experts at adjusting passions, emotions, and perceptions. What happens to the soul after death is still an unknown to the science of the Hex, but the slaad love to boast about claiming them. Any beings who they've meddled with directly, they like to say, are imprinted onto them, and their souls whisked away to be put to all sorts of nebulous use in their fortresses in Limbo. If true, this would be revolutionary for the scientific understanding of the soul, but the slaad guard these secrets jealously, and so far the depths of Limbo remain unplumbed.

 

    Instead of a brain, the slaad's soul inscribes itself directly into its body on a gnarled hunk of cartilaginous tissue called a slaadstone. These range in size from anywhere between a fist to an entire person curled up in a ball. The slaadstone keeps their physical form (relatively) coherent and is the organ from which they project their crown. Their crown is contiguous with the body; if a human can project their crown outside them, then a slaad instead grows to fit it. The shape of the slaadstone, when mapped and converted to a mathematical transformation, is the slaad's true name. Every diabolist is also an expert in topology.  

 

Fire on the Velvet Horizon

    The coloration of a slaadstone determines their maturation and is where color categorization of slaad comes from (although of course their outsides can be any shade they wish). At first, it only corresponds to how they reproduce. Red slaad oviposit eggs into a living victim, which later hatch into baby blue slaad; blue slaad all carry a virulent disease which slowly transforms victims into red slaad. Red and blue slaad are totally random in their behavior, and are where slaad get their reputation for being animalistic and inscrutable.

 

    When a slaad figures out how to consciously expand and shape its crown, the slaadstone grows additional green nodules, and it loses the ability to reproduce. It can take a slaad days or millennia to accomplish this, depending entirely on random chance. Green slaad are beginning to become able to possess longer-term plans and goals, and to communicate clearly to non-slaad. However, they're still strongly carried by whim, and struggle to follow complex chains of cause and effect, especially when it comes to the psychology of non-slaad. 

 

Dark Souls 2

 

    When a green slaad becomes able to retract its crown at will, the entire slaadstone turns grey. Before this stage, if a slaad grew an appendage or organ that later became unwanted it'd have to tear it off of itself. This stage is where you begin to see more advanced interpretations and uses of human parts, as well as ability to stick to a single course of action, working towards goals years or even decades in the making.

 

    After this, the slaadstone no longer changes color, but it continues to slowly grow. What exactly makes a slaad lord a lord rather than just an especially powerful grey slaad is still highly debated, but one of the most commonly accepted definitions is that it's when they become able to metastasize to get around their ability to affect their crown outside their bodies. They can shed clouds of tiny particulate pseudo-slaadstones which they can manipulate as extensions of themselves. One of the rarest and most feared natural disasters on the underside of the Hex is devilfog, where great cloudbanks of the stuff drift up to the earth and expose whole towns and cities to the dangers of demonic possession.

At this point, slaad also develop and cultivate obsessive pseudo-lawful schemas which they follow, and force lesser slaad to conform to. While these do form a method to their madness, it's important to keep in mind that these are adopted entirely because it pleases them. Most slaad lords discard their schemas completely and take on new, wildly different ones every couple centuries during fits of pique. Even more stable ones are prone to frequent overhauls and alterations to their mental models. 

Slaad lord self-descriptions, in their language, contain recurring combinations of tones which describe their current model of desires and states of being. These tones are consistent between slaad lords, and can be simplified into human speech to help create rough categories for their behaviors. These categories include but are certainly not limited to:

    - Jubilexes, which try to rid themselves of (pseudo-)conscious thought and return to a blessed vegetative state
    - Zuggtmoys, who strive to achieve radical mutual empathic understanding with other beings, especially non-slaad
    - Grazzts, explorers of the far reaches of physical pleasure
    - Lolths, who delight in studying the far links and ripples of dependent origination, and who experiment with it via long-reaching manipulation
    - Orcuses, melancholic misanthropes who want everything around them to reflect their own self-percieved suffering
    - Frazurbluus, who are obsessed with simulacra, and nesting, merging, and splitting them
    - Yeenoghus, who are fascinated by how people, things, and systems degrade and fall into ruin, and encouraging said degradation in interesting ways 

Berserk 

 

Finally, to end this seminar, let's discuss slaad-related beings.

First and most obvious, of course, are elves, which possess souls but no minds (as opposed to the modronic-angelic dwarves, which possess minds but no souls). However, elves are too complex of a topic to cover adequately here, and must be discussed at a later date. 

"Chuul" is a blanket term the slaad use for their creations. While by this definition nearly every native living being on the underside is, in some small or large way, chuul, this term is most often used for non-reproducing biologic creatures which serve as tools/thralls of the slaad. Still, it's very vague, and describes everything from sessile organ banks to tremendous warbeasts.

Finally, lemures are slaads which have had their slaadstones removed from them for extended periods of time, and who are no longer able to maintain any physical coherence at all. Lemures are semi-liquid and can melt and pool into each other, sometimes forming whole rivers and lakes of flesh. When a slaadstone is dropped back in, the lemure or lemures quickly reconstitutes back into a proper slaad. Fortunately, the amount of lemure biomass that a slaad can incorporate back into itself is limited by the size of the slaadstone. 

    

Ending this post with a bunch of other relevant images

 

Diplocaulus

Second Apocalypse - I haven't read this series yet don't @ me

Franken-Fran

John Martin

Bruegel the Elder

Postscript: much like the slaad, blogger formatting follows no rhyme or reason and is annoying as fuck

Lapis Tablet (Three Theurgic Bronze Age Wizard Schools)

I, G_d willing, intend to whip my brain back into DMing shape with some very casual, low-stakes dungeoncrawling gaming, with the very very cool Tell Arn. Bronze age, swords and sorcery, the works. I was urged to consider who the gods of the larger setting were by a certain someone, and after a bit of thought and back-and-forth landed on something simple and fun. 

So, here are three wizard schools. I'm not including a full class with it, there's more than enough GLOG wizard templates out there to pull from and adapt. One little idea I am including is a required implement/fetish/material component for each spell, as I think wizards should be encouraged to carry around a lot of random junk. Also, this implies a theurgic wizard-priest model where magic is acquired through devotion to a certain god, rather than wizardry and clericry necessarily being seperate. As a final note, as usual, many of these spells are stolen from friends around the GLOGosphere (mostly loch, let's be real).

Nurgle

1. Bind
Component: a heavy metal shackle clamped around your ankle and wrist

Gesture at [sum] HD of creatures you can see; their limbs are bound together and their backs weighed down with heavy iron chains and manacles.

 

2. Shatter 
Component: a set of iron molars, replacing your own in your mouth
Clack your teeth together, and glare at something inanimate that you want broken. At 1 dice, affected as a weighty hammer blow; at 2 dice, two people with tools; at 3 dice, as six people with levers and pulleys; at 4 dice, a dozen workers with a full day.

 

3. Corpse-Eaters' Call 
Component: a rattle filled with human teeth
Shake the rattle with one hand and make a rude gesture at something or someone with the other, and [sum] HD of animals will swarm from nowhere to harrass and savage it. At 1 dice these are flies and scorpions; at 2 dice bats and rats; at 3 dice crows and jackals; at 4 dice vultures and dogs.

 

4. Agonize 
Component: a poultice made of blood and stinging nettles
Apply the poultice to a hand; it is effective for [dice] uses. Those touched by said hand must save vs. agony, in the Arnoldian sense; if they attempt to take any other action besides shuddering in pain they take 1d4 nonlethal damage. They may repeat this save each minute.

 

5. Cone of Exhaustion 

Component: A rod topped with a piece of polished agate worth at least 75 gp

Project a 90 degree, 30 ft cone of green light from the tip of the rod. All creatures caught within gain [sum] slots of fatigue, save for half. Plants affected by the cone wither, and domestic animals must save vs. death.

 

6. Speak With Dead

Component: a lead box, hinged on one side and with an amplification cone protruding out another

Place a skull or severed head inside the box, compelling the soul of the dead to answer [sum]+[dice] answers to the best of their ability. You may compel them to speak the truth in exchange for -[lowest] to the total of questions asked.  

 

7. Curse

Component: a lead tablet, inscribed with the target's full name and driven through with nails

Place a curse on the named target with up to [dice] negotiated effects, to slowly take effect over the course of [sum]+7 days. This curse may only have potentially (directly) fatal effects if cast with 3 dice or more.

 

8. Heat Metal

Component: a sword sealed in a scabbard filled with blood

With a wave of your hand, [sum] slots of metal become burning hot to the touch for [dice] minutes, dealing 1d6 damage per round of contact. Casting on loadbearing metal objects may cause structural degradation.

 

9. Pyromancy

Component: a fire-blackened human bone

Roll MD and choose one of the following effects: a) cause a fire to grow [dice + 1] times in size, power, and brightness, (b) create a huge amount of smoke from an open flame, that lingers for [sum] minutes, (c) cause a fire you can see to spread even in defiance of logic, (d) ignite something that is meant to be burnt, such as a match, kindling or pipe. If cast with 3 dice or more you may also choose to change the affected flame into hellfire, black flames which can only be extinguished by your command and which produce a horrible keening wail and rotten stench.

 

10. Summon Guardian 
Component: an iron spike driven through a freshly severed human hand

Drive the spike into something and a daemon with [dice]+3 HD will burrow up from the ground to swear fealty to you. It will defend the spike and the area around it to the very best of its abilities, but is unable to stray more than 60 ft away from it. It is a fearsome fighter, but also dull and meanspirited, and if the spike is ever uprooted it is banished.

 

11. Locust Storm 

Component: a dried stomach of a human or cow, converted into a bag

A black swarm of locusts rushes out of the bag, and devours all plant life within [sum]*[dice] acres around you.  

12. Contagion 
Component: a large ceramic jar with one human corpse interred in it per MD spent, buried in filth and allowed to melt into malfeasance.

Shatter the jar and let miasma billow out. Everyone exposed to the gas, which spreads in a 20ft cloud, must save vs infection against a noxious disease of your design. It has [highest]+1 symptoms of your choice, [dice] transmission methods, and is fatal in 20-[sum] days if not properly treated. You yourself are automatically infected but asymptomatic.

 

Dooms
1 - Your skin turns grey, your blood becomes thick and black, and you now weigh twice as much as you did before.

2 -  Your flesh becomes tough hide, giving you a natural AC of 12. Your eyes become solid red orbs, and you now weigh four times as much as you did before. It's difficult to move at any pace faster than walking - you need to succeed at a check in order to break into a jog.

3 - You have been judged worthy. Your skin fully hardens into stone, and you now weigh eight times as much as you did before. The earth swallows you up and you plummet down to the citadel of Nurgle in the underworld. You are condemned to serve as a common soldier for the rest of eternity, ambitions forever stymied.

 

You may escape your doom by destroying an entire city and every man, woman, and child within it, proving yourself of continued use as an active agent to your god.

 

Tzeentch

 1. Unseen Servants 

Component: A clay figurine with lapis eyes worth 10gp, one for each servant summoned

Summon [dice] unseen servants who tend to your fires, cook your meals, and otherwise do all menial labor and chores that you wish done for you. They are invisible, except for the occasional set of footprints wet with freshwater, and silent, except for the odd childish giggle when they think you can't hear. They last until dispelled by you or until their corresponding figurine is destroyed. If you can see invisible things then they appear as humanoids made of starlight, with nonsense mismatched anatomy.

 

2. Counterspell
Component: a set of silver incisors, replacing your own in your mouth 

You may cast this as a reaction to another magician's spell. Snip your teeth together and shear apart another work of magic, subtracting your [sum] and [dice] from the original working.

 

3. Weirdfire
Component: a lantern with special-made colored lenses, costing at least 25gp

Shine the lantern's light on a target, who becomes coated in heatless blue flames. All attacks against them have +[dice] to-hit and they are incapable of hiding or concealing themselves. This lasts for [sum] rounds. 

 

4. Fog of Reverie
Component: a small bellows constructed of serpent's skin and a newborn's caul
Pump the bellows and blow out an opaque cloud of silvery fog, lasting for [sum] minutes in still air or [sum] rounds in wind. Those caught in the fog must save vs hallucinations, which linger for [dice] dungeon turns after the fog dissipates. 

 

5. Consult the Heavens

Component: a set of astrological tools 

Measure and calculate the position of the moon and stars relative to each other. You may ask the heavens [sum] questions; it knows about the events of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the workings of magic, and about anything that can be seen from the open sky.

 

6. Illusion
Component: a set of five different pigments

Dip a different finger into each pigment and trace your hand through the air. Create an illusion [sum]*5 square feet which fools [highest] senses. It can be reshaped at will and lingers for [dice] hours.

 

7. Rarify Mind

Component: a vial of smelling salts

Inhale the salts; for [dice] hours you can understand, read, and write (but not speak) in all languages, and read at a pace of 2,000 words per minute. 

 

8. Lightning Bolt
Component: a wand of fulgurite

Point your wand and fire a blast of terrible silver lightning, 5ft across and 60ft long, dealing [sum]+[dice] damage to all hit, save for half. Those in metal armor cannot save.

 

9. Suspend
Component: a bronze disk with a diamond of at least 100gp at the center 

Brandish the disk at up to [dice] objects or people, who become suspended frozen in time and space for [sum] rounds, unable to be moved or affected in any way. Unwilling creatures may save. 

 

10. Summon Spy
Component: a glass bottle with a human brain kept preserved within
Call an invisible daemon from the top of the firmament down to serve you. If you can see invisible things it appears as a devilfish whose head sprouts many wings and whose tentacles end in many talons. You can see through its eyes; it moves at the speed of the wind and serves loyally for [highest] hours before returning to the sky. At 2 dice you may also hear through it, at 3 dice you may speak through it, and at 4 dice you may cast spells through it.

 

11.  Transmute
Component: a set of weights fashioned out of the seven planetary metals

With a touch, transform one material into another for [dice] days. At 1 dice this can transmute copper, tin, wood, and chalk into one another; at 2 dice bronze, lead, and stone are added to this list; at 3 dice iron and glass are added; at 4 dice, the change becomes permanent and gold, silver, and mercury are added.

 

12. Implant Thought
Component: a silver sheet on which an intricate sigil has been engraved, each corresponding to a single kind of implantation; a sheet can be reused to repeat its effect. Takes 50gp of silver and a day of effort per MD spent

The first person besides you who sees the sigil after the MD have been rolled has a new thought or belief implanted in their head, decided by you. At 1 dice this is a passing, single coherent thought or idea; at 2 dice an implication and complex knowledge; at 3 dice a motivation and will to act on it; at 4 dice, definite knowledge which overwrites any and all contradictory memories and values.

 

Dooms

1 - The skin on your extremities becomes translucent. You become double-jointed, and your blood turns a brilliant golden color.

2 - All the skin on your body becomes translucent and squishy. You can no longer wear any armor, it's simply too painful. Your eyes turn pearlescent and can now see magic and invisible things. 

3 - You have been judged worthy. Your mind spills out of your head as so much vapor as your body collapses into a pile of clear jelly. It rises to the apex of the firmament where the great tower of Tzeentch hangs. You are given a new, more apt body and condemned to serve as a common scribe for all eternity, ambitions forever stymied.

 

You may escape your doom by rendering a language extinct on this earth such that it only exists in the archives of heaven, proving yourself of continued use as an active agent of your god.

 

Slaanesh

1. Pride
Component: a lion's tooth

Summon [dice]+1 loyal, intelligent [dice] HD big cats to fight alongside you. Their sharp, sharp claws and teeth have [dice] to-hit and deal 1d8+[dice] damage.

 

2. Feed
Component: a set of golden canines, replacing your own in your mouth.
Sink your teeth into another person and drink, making an attack roll to hit if appropriate. Deal [sum] damage to them and replenish [sum] of your own HP; you may decide if this damage is lethal or nonlethal. This experience is extremely pleasurable for both parties.

 

3. Aura of Hands
Component: a golden amulet of two interlocking hands, worth at least 20gp

For [sum] rounds you have an infinite number of translucent hands of solid air, which can only reach as far as you can.

 

4. Bottomless Appetite
Component: a silver tongue piercing
Create [sum] inventory slots of space within your stomach, which lasts for [dice] days. You store things in here by harmlessly swallowing them, and can regurgitate them with an action; if the spell ends while you still have things swallowed, you harmlessly spit them back up. Additionally, you can digest and destroy any nonmagical item you have swallowed, and are immune to most ingested poisons while it's active.

 

5. Dazzle
Component: a prayer wheel studded with at least 100gp of gemstones
So long as you spin the wheel, a warbling sphere of light appears above your head; creatures who look at it must save vs becoming stunned as they stare entranced at the light. Creatures with less than [dice] HD get no save. If a creature takes any amount of damage the spell's hold on them instantly ends.

 

6. Disguise Self
Component: a makeup kit
As you apply the makeup, your form shifts and changes into any person that you can picture for [sum] hours, fooling [highest] senses. While the spell is active you may shed and don the disguise as you wish.

 

7. Gracefulness
Component: a set of four bracelets with jangling bells around the ankles and wrists
For [sum] rounds you cannot be grappled. You gain [dice]+1 AC, take half damage on a failed save to dodge a threat and none on a successful one, and can squeeze through anything that you can fit your head through.

 

8. Wall of Blades
Component: a bronze sickle
Raise a wall from the ground up to [dice]*10ft long, in any precise configuration that you wish. Churning machinery powers cycling, scything blades on the side facing away from you, which deal 1d8+[dice] damage to anyone within 5ft of the wall. The wall has [sum] HP. When reduced to 0 HP, or after [dice] hours, the machinery fails and the wall tears itself apart. 

 

9. Split in Two
Component: an electrum torc worn around the neck, worth at least 40 gp

With a snap of your fingers divide yourself and become one mind in two bodies, distributing your HP as you two between the two halves. You still possess a shared pool of MD. When one half is reduced to 0HP, it dissolves into sparkling light, and the surviving half is revealed to be the real you, with whatever current HP that half had. If [dice] hours pass, you must choose which is the real you, and the other half dissolves.

 

10. Summon Friend

Component: a human tongue encased in gold

Beckon a beautiful feathered daemon from the middle air, invisible to all but you. At your command, it will sit atop another person's shoulders and influence their thoughts. While influenced, said person regards you as a trusted friend, and all their emotions both positive and negative are greatly exaggerated. The daemon may flit from one person's shoulders to another, but will leave again for the sky after [dice] hours.  

 

11. Fly

Component: a cape of eagles' feathers

You may fly for [dice] hours.

 

12. Call Forth the Legion  

Component: a clay mask sculpted and watered in human blood, one for each MD spent

At your command, [sum] 1 HD soldiers rise from the earth, faceless men who come equipped with spears, shields, and helmets, and which are otherwise nude. They have [dice] to-hit, will defend you to the death, and will follow commands diligently but literally. After [highest] hours they crumble back into dirt.

 

Dooms

1 - Your body becomes perfectly symmetrical and shapely, and your face becomes unnaturally beautiful. You always smell of perfume, and you weigh half as much as before.

2 - All your hair falls out and is replaced with brightly-colored feathers. The smell of perfume around you increases greatly; check for random encounter rolls twice. You weigh a quarter as much as you did before; you should consider wearing ankle weights so you don't float off or get blown by the wind.

3 - You have been judged worthy. Your face twists and freezes into a smiling ivory mask. You weigh an eighth as much as you did before, and the winds carry you up and away to Slaanesh's palace at the apex of the middle air. You are condemned to serve as a common concubine for all eternity, ambitions forever stymied.

 

You may escape your doom by throwing a tremendous wasteful party/feast/orgy at at least 50,000gp of expense, proving yourself of continued use as an active agent of your god.

 

And, of course, Khorne grants no spells.

 

  

The Color of California

The end of the world is a sleight of hand, it refers to a process and position not only in time but also in space. 

It's difficult to describe, but the best way I can put it is a quality of the air. I've driven along the edge of gorges furrowed into the frozen rock of Oregon, and stared up at the shaven face of Mt. St. Helens from within the temperate rainforest of Washington. I've seen ivy crawling up blunted hills and hollow industrial wreckage in New Jersey, and in Pennsylvania walked narrow cobble streets as old as anything in settled American can be called. In New Mexico, I've seen sunlight pierce the high grey cloudvault and fall in shafts to the scrubland below. Among all those places, fresh or polluted, dry or humid, the air possesses the simple quality of air. California air is different.

I never get used to entering the state. The air creeping in is gradual; the snow on the peaks of the Shasta range largely shrug away the air, as does the water of the long spattered lake below. It dribbles down lower elevations and flies across the flat land. In Redding it is suddenly there all at once; by Chico it is overwhelming. It's a color invisible to the naked eye which drifts across the land like clouds, nearly absent in some places, choking in others. It stains stone, stucco, and the hardier sorts of grass and shrub. In the rain and fog the visible clouds displace the invisible ones and the color fades to an innocent sere. In the sun and heat it chisels down and leaves cracks long into the night.

It's tempting to call the color sickly, even jaundiced, but to do so would be to gravely misinterpret the air. At the same time I struggle with what else to compare it to.

Cameras can't capture the air if they're too high-quality, they scalpel out everything into ROY G BIV. But the brume of Lynch's final trilogy of films wraps it around itself like a shawl; I've started reading The Crying of Lot 49 and there too it practically billows out of the pages.

When you pass the rolling hills, the brick walls with neat arpeggiating patterns, the onion domes of gas refineries, and you think of your uncle working there and then of your childhood, the maimed cactus behind your final house, the small, dark, solemn face of Mt. Diablo, and then you fly all at once onto the outstretched arm of San Francisco, with its nonsense billboards, a blandly attractive couple sitting crosslegged on the floor of a tastefully cluttered apartment, the ChatGPT logo hanging above and behind them like an apparition, and behind it saurian machinery with rust-wounded hides, their necks straining above the churning blue-grey bay dappled with tarnished sunlight, a bay always wider than you remember it, a bay that rolls on forever and ever into the air above the sea and below the sky.

 

Cephalith - A Strange Creature for Fantasy Gaming

The earth hears many secrets, and even the worked stone of castles and towers whisper to their great mother. Jealous, foolish apprentices and ex-apprentices seek the wild regions where emerald lights gleam in the night, for old codices and older rangers' tales say that these regions are where those secrets bubble are spoken back to the sky. Traveling into borderlands where nonsense runes and ritual circles are carved on trees and stones, too late they find that these stories are incomplete, and are bludgeoned to death by a gang of cold, lugubrious cephaliths!

Stooping, sluggish mudmen with lumpy deformed skulls made of green crystal. Cephaliths are born headless from the earth in huge numbers around a cluster of disembodied crystal skulls, but most are killed almost instantly in the scramble to take one, or else slowly crumble back into dirt when all are claimed. The few that survive split into small bands that slouch off into the wilderness, corralled by a despotic leader with multiple heads haphazardly embedded within them.

Cephalith
HD: 2
AC: 13
Move: Walk, earthswim slightly slower than human
No. Appearing: 2d6; die that land on a 1 or 6 indicate the presence of a multicephalith with 4 HD.
Morale: 6, or 9 if led by a multicephalith
Intelligence: Dull and aphasic
Morality: Depressive, spiteful, and bullying

Pummel: +2 to-hit, 1d6+2 damage

Crystal Skull: that which sustains the cephalith's lifeforce, each one containing a single spell and 1 MD to cast it with; this is a good list to take from. Multicephaliths instead have 1d6+1 crystal skulls embedded within them. A skull can regain its expended MD with a night's worth of exposure to starlight, or by having a creature's brains smeared onto it. If a cephalith has no crystal skulls, it loses 1 max HP a day. It's possible to learn the spell a skull contains with the aid of 500gp worth of fragile optical equipment.

Siphene - A Strange Animal for Fantasy Gaming

Gemstones that gleam in sunlit shallows and disappear as quickly as they appear. Animal corpses that walk themselves to the edge of the water and toss themselves in. Ropes of translucent slime washed up on the banks. Those who know the ways of the rivers know to keep axes and cleavers close on hand when these things appear, for these are the signs of the siphene.

 

Also known as a water jelly or falser hydra, the siphene is a siphonophore which lives in fresh, running water. The creature's reproductive core, the closest thing to a central body, is an orgy of protoplasm the sized of a balled-up human, nestled deep within an underwater cave. Emerging from the mating ball are dozens upon dozens of tendrils which extend outwards and downstream, carried and distributed by the flow of the river's water. The further out from the central body, the older the individual organisms that make up the siphene get; the three fingered hands which wave on the ends are geriatric, and slough off daily to reveal a new set. Primitive eyespots and sensitive touch and taste receptors line each tendril, and down each runs a nerve cord so that whatever is sensed by one is quickly known by the whole being.

Siphene Limb
HD: 1; takes 1 damage per die from piercing and bludgeoning weapons 
AC: 14 within water, 10 without
Move: As swift fish
No. appearing: 4d6
Morale: 8
Intelligence/morality: the most basic and primitive of predators

Slap: +2 to-hit, 1d4 nonlethal damage
Grapple: multiple limbs of the siphene can act in concert to drag and drown a single creature. The siphene makes a single roll to grapple, getting +1 for each limb beyond the first.

Treasure Mimic: siphene limbs are invisible while under the water. They can flex their cell walls to refract light and appear as gold or gemstones scattered underwater. Close study quickly reveals these to be false, but also puts one within grabbing range.
Infectious: thick with castoff zooids, creatures who ingest the waters that a siphene dwells in without boiling, or who enter the water while injured or bloodied, must save vs. infection. On a failure, they take 1d6 Con damage from a persistent low fever and digestive issues until treated for disease, but also gain the ability to dowse for bodies of waters. If they die, their corpses rises as a zombie and walks to the nearest body of water to submerge itself and germinate a new clonal siphene core.

Siphene Core
HD: 8; takes 1 damage per die from piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing weapons
AC: 14 within water, 10 without
Move: Sluggish, must be pulled by limbs
No. appearing: 1
Morale: 7
Intelligence/morality: as limb

The siphene core has a minimum of 24d6 limbs (larger ones with more HD may well have more), and will retract 6d6 per round to defend itself when threatened.

Treasure Mimic: the core can turn itself into a dazzling disco ball, refracting light that hits it in all directions. Those who look at it must save vs blindness.
Infectious: as limb, except on failure it deals 3d4 Con damage due to the density of zooids in the water.

Skoloseme - a Poison for VtM

 

Skoloseme - a most wretched poison feared and coveted by the Kindred in equal measure for its ability to kill the even already-dead. Any container which holds it, even glass, weeps filth and eventually finds itself covered in a layer of stinking grease. The poison itself, a milky white substance, causes a [huge chunk of aggravated damage/save vs death] upon entry into the body of a Kindred, as their spine rebels against them; of course, it's a certain, agonizing death for any human unfortunate enough to even touch it. 

The etymological origin of the name Skoloseme is much debated among vampirekind. The vampiric scribe Uglubathr wrote that the name was a vile pun based on its creation and appearance, as it was brewed with the seminal emissions of centipedes in an unclean skull for a month and a night; a recipe revealed to them during their visits to certain abandoned Mithraic sites in the south of the continent. The Jesuit missionary Rinieri Mazelo (widely regarded by modern Kindred scholars as a pawn of his grandsire the Shivan Mater) violently contests this suggested origin as a "deluded distortion of certain Oriental rituals, typical for the seizures of those of Mala Cavilla humour" but provides no real alternative as to its origins. 

The historian and chronicler Glaude takes a completely different tack. He suggests that the name is a scribal error for the earlier and more accurate name of skotoseme, or simply "suicide poison"; a name the substance earned when the vampiric princess Aylin killed herself and much of her court by pouring the poison into her eyes, during the Kindred civil war in Constantinople.