One Great Burning Hand (A dungeon entrance for Barony)

I'm not afraid to admit I may have bitten off a bit more than I can chew.

The indefatigable Louis bade I post more, and we decided to duel: I would create a dungeon around the prompt Frozen Dead Center of the Earth before he leaves the world-wide-web for a month on vacation. What I failed to anticipate was that just a couple hours later the also-indefatigable Phlox would rediscover the old Cloak-and-Sword ruleset and send the whole GLOG server whirling around, me included. I got caught up in writing two whole classes for it, and right before a vacation of my own! What's a girl to do? Well, since Louis has split a dungeon across multiple posts before......

In the northern rocky foothills of the Barony,

where the roads thin and the towns become more sparse, there's a crack in the ground from which frigid air constantly seeps. The ground around it is dead and cracked, and the rain freezes when it hits the soil, forming thousands of tiny ice stalagmites which crunch underfoot and melt away as soon as the sun shows its face again. When the ground shook, when the Old Capital groaned and caved in on itself, it's said that it shook a piece of the sky loose and sent it plummeting down to earth, cold and misty. This is little more than a regional folk legend at this point. What isn't a folk legend is what crawled back out of the pit - a burning amaranthine spectre, maimed and shrouded in fog, which roams by night. Let it take your sheep, break into your cellars and snatch your food, or else it'll grab you with its one terrible arm and fold your ribs around a tree. Many people have taken to leaving it offerings so that it doesn't decide to take all they own.

The Amaranthine Ghost

In truth, the "Amaranthine Ghost" is a fairly recent arrival. Her true name is Nilakshi (though she almost never deigns to tell it to tiny humans), and she is a giant from the far north. Her whole body is criss-crossed with scars, her right arm is severed up to the elbow, she is missing several teeth and a significant chunk of her right foot. Branded onto her back is a White City image which tells how true friendship doesn't really exist. 

Many, many years ago she saw the star fall in her third eye, behind the curtain of the mountains. She decided to leave the last fortress, jettison herself from its constant dying, to investigate her vision and why it was given to her. She has been walking for a very long time.

She arrived at the pit a couple years ago, and was filled with ennui and disappointment by what she found was below. But there were far worse things churning beneath the earth, and she slaughtered them by the dozens mere weeks before they boiled up. Now, content to play the local boogeyman for now, she contemplates what to do next. Does she start the long journey back home? Does she cast herself into the earth? Or, with luck, are there a group of competent humans willing to do her bidding by simple dint of being able to fit into where she can't?

The Ghost's Cave

The pit, at its opening, is about 10 meters wide, and filled with cool foggy air near the top where it meets the warmer air of the surface. Nilakshi's home is about 15 meters down in a large hollow along the northwest wall; she keeps a fire, stolen food and alcohol, and a large heap of animal skins to sleep in here. While bereft of worldly riches, she's willing to serve as a patron for adventurers wanting to delve into the pit, trading oracular visions for certain treasures that she herself can't reach. If the party has a friendly relationship with her, she'll oblige to play the occasional reluctant deus ex machina; if not, she'll cast them into the pit to shatter at the bottom.  

Down Below

The pit is thousands of meters deep, and freezing cold. The deeper you get the narrower it becomes, and the more inhospitable to life.

Past Nilakshi's cave, the air of the pit hovers around freezing. The walls of the pit are covered with a riot of lichen, host to a whole ecosystem of creatures. 900 meters down the pit tears through ancient palatial ruins, the haunt of strange siliconoid men.

The pit continues, occassionally ripping through more ruinous crystal apartments. By 1500 meters the lichen begins to die off, and by 1800 the walls are bare and slick with ice. The pit narrows, constricted by tectonic instability, and the pockmarked caves are too frigid to sustain any life - except for, of course, the loathsome worm-faces.

The pit is approximately 2600 meters deep. At the bottom, the killing cold emanates from the iron star which fell so long ago, sitting amidst the remains of an extraordinarily unlucky crushed extremophile. Within the dead star, corridors far too narrow for Nilakshi's frame, is what drew her vision so long ago.

Their Conversation is in Heaven (GLOG Class: Beguine)

A lot of high-power magical classes for Cloak-and-Sword have been released lately. I mean, I'm certainly not blameless with my Fay. So, I wanted to write up a contrast, something more down to earth, more human.

Beguine

Start with: the grey habit of your order, herbs and medicines, weaving supplies, a book of prayers, a stout staff.

Sisters

You are part of an informal religious order of women of all ages and classes, sworn to frugality, chastity, and mutual aid. You are free of the obligations of domestic life expected of most women. However, unlike a nun, your vows are not binding; you are not expected to give up your former worldly possessions, and you may return to the paces of secular life at any time. Whenever you need shelter, minor favors, or someone to talk to, you have the aid of your fellow sisters, as well as the Beghards, the less-significant but similarly-sworn order of men; there are usually at least one or two others in every populous town and city.

Cloth

Due to the grey zone between secularity and sacredness that you dwell in, you get -2 reaction and are viewed with suspicion by church and government officials, and misogynists. However, due to your work, you get +2 reaction with the poor, the sick, the pregnant, and the dying. 

Hand

You are proficient in a trade from your former life. If you ever abandon your vows, you may return to it.

Staff

You are proficient in the healing of sickness and injuries. Childbirth which you midwife for is always safe for both mother and child. Deaths which you minister for are always peaceful, and the body may not be raised as undead by mortal power. You are completely immune to leprosy, and have +2 to save against all other infectious diseases besides plague.

Bowl

Food you serve is always filling, and staves off hypothermia for the next twelve hours.

Book

Though you have not taken binding vows, while praying aloud you count as of the cloth for the purpose of warding off devils and fairies and so on.

Sash

People mock the chaste, but you have known intimacy in the divine that mortal hands can never provide. You are immune to being charmed, feared, or esprited by mortal sources.

Nothing

Most Beguines are content to remain charity workers, living relatively independent lives for women. But light shines through the cracks. If you fast for a month, remain in a single room for a year, or return from the edge of certain death, then you may choose to simplify your soul. From henceforth, you are of the cloth. You are always simultaneously charmed, afeared, and esprited by the Divine, and immune to all other mental effects. You may subsist off nothing but water. You are immune to extreme heat, extreme cold, disease, drowning, bleeding, and pain. You have -2 to reaction rolls from everyone who isn't poor, sick, pregnant, or dying. Reaction rolls of 2-10 with church officials count as a 2 (open hostility, accusations of heresy), and rolls of 11-12 count as a 5 (open suspicion, the most fragile begrudging tolerance of presence). When you die, your body will turn to light, and then nothing. 

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.