Kicking it Old-School with 5e: Character Creation

5th edition is super-popular, and that is fucking great. New blood is good blood.

The question is "How do we get all the new blood that's over there, and bring it over here?"

To that end, I'm writing up a couple posts as a way to bridge the gap between 5th edition and old-school play, as a way to encourage them into the mindset while not straying too far from the rules that they are familiar with. Ideally, it would be something that you could introduce to all those bushy-tailed, bright-eyed newbies while running sessions at the local library without scaring them all away.

Basic mechanics

• Attributes are 3d6 in order. Attribute bonuses are as in 5e. 
• If the level-0 session is not meant as a funnel, you may adjust scores as you wish.
• Reaction and morale rolls are in effect.
• For level 0 characters, start with 1d4 + CON bonus HP.
• Alternatively, HP = CON,  skip HP gain at level 1.
• Checks operate under Shadow of the Demon Lord rules. You need to beat 10. Add your ability modifier to d20, then apply the greatest boon or bane that was rolled. 
• Initiative is also according to SotDL rules.
• Advantage and Disadvantage are replaced with boons and banes.
• Skills are out. Proficiency may be treated as a single Boon. 
• Feats are for walking, not for characters.
• Backgrounds can be whatever fulfills "prior employment". Use whatever list you like. You start with a (usually makeshift) weapon and an appropriate item, DCC style.

 

Character Race

Character race is determined by die drop.

Category (d%)	Type	Race	Reroll	Bonus	Weakness
1-5	Human (d20)	1-7: Human	Any	Kinship with dogs	1 bane to resist mutation
		8-10: Dwarf	CON	Can identify origin of worked items	No booze = exhaustion
		11-13: Halfling	DEX	Lucky: rerolls a 1, 1/day	Save vs lost in cities
		14-16: Goliath	CON	Shrug off d12 damage 1/day	Too big for normal doors
		17-18: Half-Orc	STR	Extra attack after drawing first blood	Cursed by the orc gods
		19-20: Firbolg	WIS	Speak to animals and plants	Unmaskable smell of dirt and sweat
6-7	Monstrous (d10)
		1-2: Kobold	DEX	Can squeeze into tiny spaces	Terribly nearsighted
		3-5: Goblin	DEX	Immune to disease	Leave filth and grease everywhere
		6: Hobgoblin	INT	Knows military hand signs	All about machismo and saving face
		7: Bugbear	STR	Hides without detection under beds and behind doors	Terribly confused by blankets and sheets
		8: Lizardman	CON	d6 bite, 13 AC scales	Save vs cold or 1 bane to all checks
		9: Orc	WIS	Can survive a hit that would drop to 0 HP, 1/session	Save vs blood-frenzy
		10: Serpentman	INT	Milk a dose of venom 1/day	Opium addiction
8-9	Elf (D12)
		1-2: Gnome	INT	1 boon to understand, repair, and build mechanical devices	Enemies may choose to punt
		3-4: Half-Elf	CHA	1 boon on saves vs magic	Hated by domestic animals
		5-6: Wood Elf	DEX	Stealth boon in natural cover	Allergic to iron
		7-8: Drow	CHA	Darkvision	Sunlight sensitivity
		9: Sea Elf	CON	Speak with sea creatures	Sinks like a stone
		10: High Elf	INT	Thermal vision and magnetic sense	Terrified of ugly things
		11: Shadar-Kai	DEX	Speak with dead, lvl/day	Looks like a warmed-over corpse
		12: Eladrin	CHA	Can make dead plants bloom	Must have permission to set foot in a building
10	Exotic (d8)
		1: Dragonborn	STR	2d6 dragonbreath 1/day, 15'	Breath causes 1d6 damage to self
		2: Kenku	DEX	Mimicry of sounds and voices	Compulsion to devour carrion
		3: Tabaxi	DEX	Darkvision	Save vs laziness
		4: Gith	INT	Critical range 19-20 with blades	Save vs chaos or anxiety attack
		5: Duergar	CON	1 boon vs mental effects	Alcohol triggers PTSD
		6: Triton	CHA	Can breathe underwater	1 damage / hour if left to dry out
		7: Aasimar	WIS	Can heal ally lvl HP	Explode when critically hit
		8: Tiefling	CHA	Resistance to fire damage	Heavy leaden footsteps

 

A Minor Extrapolation of Setting

5e comes with some implied setting bits that aren't all that common in OSR-style games: cosmopolitanism, panoplies of playable beings, and high magic all over the place. Certainly not in the tradition of Appendix N, but let's try something different.

All those angels / demons / dragons / liches / squibbly squid things / other immensely powerful beings out there? They run the world. They are the boot stomping down on everyone's neck, forever. They are the scions of a world based on inequality and systematic oppression.

Imagine a world where Jeff Bezos can resurrect himself.

You know that sort of crippling melancholy oppression found in the boat and parade sequences of Ghost in the Shell? Replace the computers with magic.

The superficial trappings are different, but the core is the same: old-school 5e characters are nobodies on the fringe, scrounging through the wilderness and the ruins of previous civilizations and societies, trying to make ends meet in a world stacked against them. It's basically scum and villainy tier Star Wars.

If the players want to be big heroes, let them. But make them earn it. No one gets to start out as Mr. Big Hero Man. Gotta work for it.

Classes 

Character classes will be featured in a subsequent post. For the time being, one could easily use classes as they are in 5e, or Mateo Diaz Torres excellent Lamentations of the Fifth Princess. The final result will probably tend towards the latter over the former, but with more random tables.The aim is to get all nine core classes adapted, so that prospective players will keep the options they get in the default book.

Class: Priest

Alexis Rives

Everyone and their cousin has their personal take on clerics (I really, really like Beloch Shrike's anti-magic cleric, myself) so I might as well too.

Class: Priest

HP, XP, Saves: As cleric
Armor and weapons: Light armor and simple weapons only.
Starting Items: Staff, holy text, holy symbol (prayer beads, icon, amulet, etc)

Bless: With a prayer and a laying on of hands, you may do the following:

• Bless a person: give another individual 1d6 + lvl points that they may add to any non-damage, non-magic roll they make. This may be cast CL times per day, but the recipient may only receive one blessing per day.
• Bless an object: The object is considered holy to the priest's religion and will remain so until the next day. If cast every day for a week, the object will permanently be considered holy.

Turn: Priests may turn away unholy beings as in LotFP. Roll 2d6 and compare to the graph below.

• Numbers indicate what must be rolled for a success.
• 'T' indicates automatic turn.
• 'D' indicates automatic destruction.

Upon failure, the priest cannot Turn for the remainder of the day.

Turning works against whatever is considered unholy by the priest's religion. By default, this includes demons, malicious spirits, and desecrated undead.

Relics: Priests may use relics appropriate to their religion

Holy Orders: Choose one of the following.

• Parishional
• +1 to reaction rolls within your community.
• Can drum up 1d6 volunteers or a specialist in an emergency.
• Monastic
•  +1 to reaction rolls with those of religious or political authority.
•  May request access to monastery's wealth and resources (CHA check).
• Scholastic
• Gain 2 additional languages and 2 academic areas of knowledge.
• +2 boons when attempting to debate on a known topic.
• Martial
• May wear medium armor and use bladed weapons.
• +1 to reaction roles among soldiers and men of violence.
• Penitent
• +1 additional HP gained each level.
• May Bless and Turn as one level higher for sacrifice of 1d6 HP (heals 1/day)
• Mendicant
• +1 to reaction rolls with the poor, homeless, and marginalized.
•  May live on half rations.
• Inquisitorial
• 3-in-6 chance of accurately detecting a lie. 3-in-6 chance of false positive.
• +2 boons on attempts to intimidate.
• Charismatic
• Can gather and stir up a crowd with an hour of preaching.
• Can project your voice and be heard over long distance and loud noises.
• Heterodox
• Possess studied knowledge of rival religions, 1d3 close contacts among other faiths.
• Take orders from the top: may occasionally eschew church bureaucracy.

Mike Mignola

Chambermaidens: Henry Justice Ford Monster Manual

For Eric Nieudan's bestiary project.

Chambermaidens

Armour class: as leather
Hit dice: 1
Move: 1 turn of fast, otherwise slow
Attacks: Fist (1d2)
No. Appearing: 1
Morale: 9
Treasure: Special (see below)
Alignment: Neutral or Good

A type of faerie native to all manner of pots, jars, and assorted earthenware containers. Typically take the form of beautiful women about a foot tall, wearing gowns of white, blue, or butterfly wing. Generally friendly, but very protective of their pots and the contents thereof. They greatly enjoy riddles and games, and so will ask visitors to bring them some obscure and obfuscated item for their help.

What Does the Chambermaid Desire?

1. A peacock tailfeather.
2. A crossword puzzle with no errors, done in pen by an orc.
3. A gastrolith from a basilisk.
4. A spirit of hope and open skies.
5. An ogre's love letter.
6. A shell that contains seven seas.

A befriended chambermaid can provide information about the dungeon, adjacent hexes, enchantments, or local monsters, and will be willing to share the contents of their pot.

What Does the Pot Contain?

1. Enough stew to keep 10 men fed for a month.
2. A pond's worth of cool, clean water.
3. A wagon full of nightsoil.
4. The scraps from 10 aurochs eaten by trolls.
5. The mummified organs of a prince, wizard, or priest.
6. Fine wine enough to keep an army drunk for days.

Breaking a chambermaiden's pot will release all of its contents at once, and produce one very angry chambermaid. Curses will fly.

(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Alternate Progression Methods

As I delve further into the endless abyss of do-it-yourself (and the reality that my games are destined to be pick up episodes rather than long-running consistent campaigns), I am becoming less invested in even gold-for-xp. So here are some musings on alternate progression systems.

Insight / Wonder

Ripped straight from Bloodborne. You gain Insight when you catch a glimpse of the true nature of things that lies underneath what you think you know.

• Characters begin with 0 Insight.
• Insight is gained by glimpsing the eldritch truth of reality.
• Gain 1 Insight at the baseline
• Gain 2 Insight for large revelations
• Gain 3 Insight for significant revelations
• Gain 5 Insight for shattering revelations

As one gains Insight, the world will begin to change around them. They will see, hear, and be able to interact with things others cannot. Doors will open. New beings will be encountered. More secrets will be revealed. You could build an entire adventure area map out of a bullet list of Insight triggers. Example:

At 10 Insight, the chains upon the cellar door in the Abandoned Farmhouse are shattered and scattered across the room. Muffled organ music might be heard from below.

Insight can be spent to gain spells or items. A lonely mailbox in the middle of nowhere, a talking doll, a Man of Leng; whoever the seller they ought not be reachable without Insight.

Wonder works just the same as Insight, but is triggered by different criteria. Wonder is gained by leaving your comfortable life of limits and known quantities and heading off to the hills, and seeing wonderful and fantastic things. The more Wonder you have, the more you are able to see, as it means you have gone further from home.

Wonder is spent at the expense of power. You can return home with a head full of the stuff and be no worse for wear, but the great temptation is to sell your experiences for all those shiny magic items.

Faction Progression

The best mechanical part of Degenesis, is how progression is linked to gaining higher rank within one's cult. The game attaches a lot of extra stuff like skill level requirements that you have to buy with XP and those will be ignored,

Progression within a faction is based around rights and privileges. As a character ranks up, they have access to better equipment, more connections,  greater authority, and so on. Along with the privileges, there will also be responsibilities; low-ranking members of the faction will be given commands, higher-ranking members will find themselves beholden to needs on a greater scope.

In my head, I see four major stages. You rank up by accomplishing major tasks:

1. Initiate - Sign of faction allegiance, basic equipment, basic rights.
2. Member - Connections, proper agent's equipment, privileges.
3. Veteran - Authority, access, the good stuff.
4. Leader - Top of the line, iconic stuff. Significant power within the faction and influence without. Underlings. Secrets.

This progression system is all about giving the players more tools to work with, rather than new abilities to learn. I've explored some of this in my Shadow of the Eschaton hack, and want to play with it more in the future.

Faction progression can also be used alongside typical class progression, or trimmed down into faction-specific reaction modifiers as one desires.

Party Progression

A variant of faction progression, except the party is the faction in question. In my mind the first comparison is the hamlet from Darkest Dungeon, where your investment improves the available services as the game goes on. Gold as XP for a building (which would have classes of their own) turns it all into "we have enough money to afford better equipment", rather than "I am rich, I am better at swinging a sword". Blacksmith, apothecary's shop, temple, etc.

Gold invested in the hamlet / home base / caravan wagon / spaceship etc. grants bonuses to the entire party, regardless of who is dropping in or out. To this is added the soft progression of allies, access, and authority that is gained naturally through adventuring, and we can have forward progression without falling prey to power creep (hopefully)

Unified Food Theory

Veronika Niersova

People in the DIY sphere really love cooking rules in their games, but I've never seen it all in one place. That's what this post is for. Featured herein is Arnold's K's GLOG lunch rule, Lungfungus' monster corpse usage (original post no longer up), Occultesque's dungeon gourmand, Skerples' Monster Menu-All, Wizzzargh's monsters-into-magic-items, Stewpot Witches (Benjamin Baugh in Chromatic Soup 01), and my own adipomancers.

Hunting and Gathering

• A dead monster has a 1-in-6 chance of being unusable.
• Taking 10+ damage in one attack, fire, acid, magic, etc increase failure by 1 each.
• Dead monsters can provide 1 field ration per hit die (Field rations last for 2 days).
• Salt, fire, and HD hours can turn a dead monster into HD^2 standard rations.
• A stewpot witch can do this naturally.
• A stewpot witch can spend 1 turn of foraging (ballpark it as an hour) to scrounge up enough herbs, edible plants, mushrooms, and other comestibles for 1d8 people. They have a 5-in-6 chance of finding a random exotic ingredient, or a 3-in-6 chance of finding a specific one.
• These ingredients, special or mundane, are treated as additions to monster meat.
• Meals cooked with special ingredients work as in Chromatic Soup 01. (pg 44-49) 

Preparation

• Base preparation chance is 1-in-6. Increase success odds by 1 for each of the following.
• Fire
• Water
• Utensils
• Pots & pans
• Spices
• A stewpot witch automatically succeeds at this. 
• A well-supplied party able to take time while camping also succeeds automatically.

The Meal

For normal meat, roll d6. Add +1 if the food was properly cooked and prepared, subtract -4 if the meat is rotten.

• 1: Save vs CON or no benefit from meal
• 2-5: No extra effect.
• 6: Heal 1 additional HP. 

Consult the Monster Menu-All to determine if the monster meat has any other properties.

Healing 

There are two methods:

• GLOG-style: A meal restores 1d6 + Lvl HP. A meal and restful sleep heals all HP.
• Dungeon Gourmand Method: HP restored is according to the amount of unique ingrediants used, as follows. This scale begins with two unique ingredients (meat and forage)
• (2) 1d6, (3) 2d6. (4) 3d6, (5) 2d6 + 6, (6) 3d6 + 6, (7) 2d6 + 12, (8) 3d6 + 12

Leftovers 

What is not eaten can be used in the creation of potions, spells, magical items, and magical weapons. The specific components needed might be found here and here (with more to come).

• Knowledge of what components are useful for magical purposes comes naturally to stewpot witches, and otherwise might be found in the pages of a well-notated field guide.

Generic components (hide, bones, etc) may be gathered up into a bundle and sold for the following prices (roll d6).

• 1-3: HD^2 * 3 silver
• 4-5: HD^2 * 6 silver
• 6:  HD^2 * 9 silver

Fin

And there you have it! Everything you need to picnic across the land and indulge all your Monster Hunter / Dungeon Meshi dreams. Don't forget to feed the monk, watch out for cannibals, and don't forget horrific mutations from magically-tainted meat.

Now YOU TOO can be like Laios!

Sons Born of Dragon Lords

Orjan Ruttenborg Svendsen

The Dragon Lords

Ten there were, in the court at the Crown of the World. Mother killed the dragon lords, this we all know, but to think that they are gone and forgotten is folly: Their influence remains strong enough even now, emerging in their descendants as the mark of the old saurian god-kings.

1) Hō-ō, Fire of Heaven
The Mesozoic King, whose majesty was matched only by his pride.

Raiment: Scales like the sunset, feathers as bright as the dawn, eyes of noontide
Breath: Primal solar fire
Aspect: The rage of kings, unquenchable conquest, eyes only for glory days.


2) Qe, Golden One
The haughty god-queen, consort of Hō-ō. The first of felines, by common tradition.

Raiment: Alabaster scales, honeygold plumage.
Breath: Shimmering radiance
Aspect: Superiority and dominion, elegance and cruelty


3) Stvryzon, Cold-Blooded
Unmoved by the politics of the court, he loathed all equally and without ceasing.

Raiment: Shards of glacier blue, auroral fins
Breath: The cold that rots
Aspect: Causeless hatred, immovable conservatism, slow degradation unto death


4) Bennig-Ba, Eye of Eternity
The oracle; a male-female who would speak in riddles and deny the court's purpose through enigma.

Raiment: Scarlet eyes patterned on silver scales.
Breath: Breaker of minds
Aspect: To gaze off the edge of the abyss, and see there truth.


5) Enesh-Kal, Keeper of the Sands
The up-and-comer, the desert-hatched, the self-made lord.

Raiment: Sculpted waves of glass
Breath: Lightning upon dry air
Aspect: The dissonance of inside and out, the unexpected new


6) Va Sin Dahl, Sleeper
Emerging from the lands of dream only on occasion, to give silly and ill-informed opinions.

Raiment: Soft purples pinks, and blues, skin like silk pillows
Breath: Thundering voice
Aspect: The disconnection of the dreamer, misplaced innocence


7) Aunoom, Voice in the Deep
At the base of the mountain there was a bottomless lake, and here did Aunoom live.

Raiment: Vast feathered gill-fans, biolominescent flanks
Breath: Black-and-white hyperpressure fumarole
Aspect: The silence of primordial waters; chaotic undercurrent of deep time


8) Nai-Nom, Steel-Faced
The enforcer, the vizier, chosen confidante and old confederate of the king

Raiment: Layered plates of burnished steel; mane of blackened iron quills.
Breath: An iron tooth, spit at speed
Aspect: Glory through violence and victory through injury; denial-of-life


9) Xebal, Devourer
Gluttonous and glutinous, a perennial mocker and hypocrite; could never be pinned to a position.

Raiment: Mud-brown and moss-green, mottled and peeling
Breath: Bone shards and offal
Aspect: Singularity of self, encompassing greed, false kowtowing


10) Raan, Above the Stars
Distant and silent, alighting upon the world only rarely and saying nothing of what he saw beyond.

Raiment: Vantablack and points of light
Breath: Stellar radiation
Aspect: The great mystery

Dragons Today

In the way that there are still finches at my birdfeeder, echoes of the true dragons creatures survived into the present day: wyrms, wyverns, drakes, sea serpents, rocs, thunderbirds, terror birds, phoenixes, isolated pockets of surviving saurians, and so on. None of these creatures can reach the majesty of their ancient sires nor their power or size. The few that have the potential for speech and higher thought carve little kingships for themselves out in the wilds or find themselves at the heads of guilds and banks.

The more pressing danger are the men who call themselves dragons. Men who believe they are owed the world, and have no qualms about taking it for themselves. They show no allegiance to the gods, reverence for the Folk, nor sympathy for their fellow man.

Many of them are allied with Hell, in full knowledge of the inevitable betrayal. They lose no sleep over it. They don't lose sleep over anything they do.

The Eleventh Dragon

There is one Lord remaining, exiled from the Crown of the World long before all of this happened. He waits sleeping far beneath the land and seas. If he were ever to wake, he would devour the Holocene world and make solid his claim of kingship.

The secret cultists of the Eleventh Dragon are by all reckoning the most dangerous individuals in the world.

Terrible Horrible Beauty and Wonder

It looks so much better in person

S. Petersen's Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors makes the Mythos beautiful. This isn't just because of the fantastic art (which is top-tier, top-notch, top-shelf, and top-gun) but for the special way that the art combines with the text, and how that can then be applied.

You see, the Field Guide is written as an in-universe text (complete with fake citations, one of the top 3 ways to pander directly to me) compiled by scholars of the preternatural at good old Miskatonic U. As such, they're significantly more enthusiastic and open-minded about the whole deal - the topics of their study are handled with excitement and curiosity, though still with great care: most can still kill you quite easily. It's closer to how a naturalist would talk about a tiger, or a dinosaur, or something else of that nature

The titular horror has been approached as a living thing, unstuck from the limits and attitudes of its original incarnation. The reaction provided by the text isn't "run away, hide, go insane, and die, in that order if you're lucky" - it's "here's what we know, isn't that neat?"

In short, everything is terrible and horrible, but beautiful and wondrous too: Here's the information, go where you want and extrapolate what you will.

Which is just what I'm going to do. Buckle up, we're doing some setting extrapolation.

The Most Important Fact in the Entire Mythos

Australian physicist Nevil Kingston-Brown dies in 2518. This means that Australia, the profession of physicist, the structures necessary for the previous two things to exist, and boring-ass white guys (alas) still exist on Earth up until at least that date. There is no need to panic.

Re: Elder Things

• There are still Elder Thing settlements on Earth's ocean floor.
• Descendant sub-species exist out among their abandoned and collapsed colonies. 
• [Which may, like their progenitors, be relatively-comprehensible to humanity.]
• At least one known incident of seeding life on a colony world (see: Earth)
• [Thus, through action or accident, there is cause to think there might be more planets out there that ended up the same way. No guarantees, but the possibility of alien life more on our level.]

Re: Yithians

• A cult exists to protect and facilitate Yithian travelers when they are in a modern era.
• The cult maintains an active trade of information and technology with the Yithians.
• [This isn't a cult, this is sensible people acting sensibly and diplomatically. This is the foot in the door.]

Re: Byakhee

• Possess an organ which facilitates flight, capable of reaching 0.1 C in vacuum.
• Said organ can also facilitate causality-maintaining faster-than-light travel at a speed of ~ 1.1 ly/day, for relatively low energy requirements.
• [Seriously, they can break lightspeed and only end up really, really hungry.]

 

Re: Mi-Go

• Are in possession of a sizable interstellar civilization.
• [Seem to have replaced the Elder Things as the dominant power in local space. Overlap possible, co-existence probability unknown]
• Only interested in Earth for some rare-earth mining operations, willing to employ and consult with humans to maintain secrecy and security. 
•  Certainly not entirely trustworthy (see: brain canisters), but they seem to favor worlds inimical to human life and going about their business.]

 

Re: Deep Ones

• Biologically immortal - their bodies simply don't break down.
• Originated on Earth, have hybridized with humans and dolphins.
• [DNA is thus no stranger than any other Earth-based life, splicing possible]
• Can hibernate for decades, burning off most body mass to survive without nourishment. 
• Hybrids gradually show more traits before full transofmration, but not all achieve metamorphosis. Specific stimuli or genetic markers might halt full transformation.
• [Hello CRISPR]
• Significant and widespread civilization in the oceans, but maintain connection to human coastal settlements for purposes of reproduction.
• [Perhaps they need us. Perhaps they are sterile on their own.]

Re: Ghouls

•  Specifically human-derived, means currently unknown.
• [Similar in traits to those transformed by Ithaqua. Potential link?]
• [Similar in traits to ghasts. Potential link?]
• [The state of carnivorous undeath seems malleable in humans.]

Re: Shoggoths

• Have been domesticated by Deep Ones and Elder Things.
• Can be conditioned to grow in specified organ-patterns.
• [Primary danger seems to be conditioning/programming breakdowns. Proceed with great caution, akin to AI development].

So Where Does This Lead Us? 

• Yithian technology and deep-time knowledge is the foot in the door and the first step to getting off of Earth before the eventual end-date.
•  Alliance with the Elder Things possible, though I cannot say if it's probable, as it is not explicitly stated if we have anything they want. They may be willing to part with some technical knowledge in exchange for assistance in reaching their old colony worlds.
• Trade deals and diplomatic agreements can be made with the Mi-Go. Even with the brain in a jar thing, humans are typically a lot worse to other humans than the bugs are.
• Deep-One hybridization on the small scale should be possible through gene-engineering. Further interaction with the Deep Ones via hybrid proxies can be used in conjunction with Elder Thing knowledge to gain (relatively) safe shoggoth usage.
• A shoggoth could potentially / should be able to replicate a byakhee's flight organ. (It's easier than catching and maintaining a domestic population in Earth orbit) The terrible hunger caused by FTL usage can be offset through solar or nuclear energy sources.
• Ghouls and Hybrids can be used as vanguards for long-distance or high-danger expeditions.

And this is without touching the Dreamlands, or half the other things in the book, or all the stuff in my other CoC books, or half of the other potentials that could be here.

Humans being humans, every step here will inevitably be fucked up.

Too Long, Didn't Read

The future of humanity is Abe Sapien riding around the cosmos with his ghoul co-pilot on a faster-than-light shoggoth with solar sails and that's awesome.