d66 Folk

The King in Yellow once sought to make a record of all the Folk in the world. Under the tutelage of Bai Ze of the White Marsh he learned the names and natures of 11,520 types of magical beings, and wrote them all down in a single text.

The King said to Bai Ze: "Surely now that I have learned the names and natures of the 11,520 kin, I have made a record of all the Folk?"

Bai Ze said to the King: "You have not yet named a grain of sand in all the deserts of the universe."

Knowing that the great power of the White Marsh spoke the truth, the King despaired in his attempt, destroyed his text, and delved into more achievable fields of sorcery. Only references to fragments now remain.

The list below avoids the King in Yellow's folly by listing only some of those Folk who typically wear a form similar to man. It does not include the multitudes of spirits of the waters, wilds, and winds, which are well beyond counting, nor those who take the guise of animals, nor those who appear as outrageous monsters.

Justin Gerard

d66 Folk

11. Álfar - The cold kings and cruel queens in the from the Courts Beneath the Hills. They loathe and despise humanity for the insults made by Mother long ago. Why they wear man's face is not known; Mockery, perhaps.

12. Forest People - The Old Ones. Also called the First Folk, for they were the first to form a compact with Mother when she wandered the world as Clever Lu. The lords and ladies among them will wear robes of emerald and gold, and masks of celestial bronze.

13. Nymph - They take on the appearance of beautiful women, with their forms further shaped by the clime and environment. As they are found near-everywhere, this leads to a boggling array of phenotypes. (Mountain nymphs are rough and craggy and white-haired, river nymphs might be slender and blue or wide and brown, farmland nymphs are plump and smell of fresh-tilled earth, etc.)

14. Woodwose - Huge, hairy, gamboling; whose beards are filled with moss and whose skin is daubed with woad. They are often seen in the company of nymphs

15. Dwarf - The people of the Mountain King. Velvet fur, beaded eyes, pink star noses. None in all the world knows the earth and its treasures than the dwarves, and none may beat them in the making of metals and the cutting of gems.

16. Brownie - Spirits of house and home. Small as a cat, with big eyes, wide ears, brown skin, and nimble fingers. Will help out around the dwelling (catching pests, watching over children) in exchange for milk or whiskey and a warm cabinet to rest in. A brownie may venture beyond its home by carrying a fragment of the house with them (brownies who have lost their homes to disrepair or disaster are most commonly seen like this, carrying around little reliquaries on their backs).

21. Goblin - Everyone knows a goblin when they see one. Or hear one. Or smell one. You usually hear or smell them first. As subtle as a pie in the face or a bomb down the drawers, they are.

22. Hobgoblin - Sterile goblin females*. Humorless guards of the Goblin Queens and the masters of the Market. Fond of punctuality, laconism, and straight lines.

23. Jack-Puck - A goblin who has "gone legit" (or what passes for it among goblins); masters of the Goblin market. They are very, very wealthy, and so wear fine and fashionable garments. Less comedically ugly than normal goblins, still comedically ugly.

24. Gremlin - Pesky little bastards, smeared in soot and oil. They have an infinite curiosity for mechanical devices and  complicated trinkets, and enjoy nothing more than pulling something apart and putting it back together to achieve an entirely different function.

25. Kodama - Little wooden figurines a palm in height. They will peek out from the leaves and watch lonely travelers pass them by, whispering as if caught in the wind. They are considered good fortune, for their presence means the forest is healthy.

26. Troll - Huge and hunch-shouldered, with elephant's skin pebbled with riverbed stones. They wallow in rivers and lakes, or live alone in caves. They tend to keeping their monolithic troll-stones, through which one might speak to another across hundreds of leagues. They do not enjoy company in general (and hat goats in particular), but are fond of the birds that clean their teeth.

31. Wangoonie - Inhabitant of billabongs deep in the Red Desert. Territorial and terribly rude, like stealing things form travelers.

32. Red-Head -  Inhabitants of battlefields. They wear scavenged armor and dip their head-scarves in fresh blood. They dance and parade about with the heads of the fallen on pikes, mocking the dead for their folly. A violent and callous bunch.

33. Spookum - A general term for a unique, absurd being that appears during the mischief of Goblinwatch; alternatively, another name for the Bugaboo.

34. Mona Llarona - A horse-headed woman in a tattered white dress. Sometimes seen carrying a deceased infant. Weeps softly and without end; if disturbed, she will let out a bowel-loosening wail and pursue until a threshold is passed, or the intruders killed.

35. Shadow People - A shadow without a caster. Seen mostly in twos and threes, sometimes in great crowds, but never alone. They make no noise, and seem to take no notice of anything around them as they go about business that we cannot see.

36. Bogie - Pimple-faced, bug-eyed, snaggle-toothed, pencil-necked, drippy-nosed, nasal-voiced terribly awkward, occasionally frightsome pain in the craw.

41. Wispherder -  Body and limbs made of twigs. The head is a big brass lamp filled with green-blue fire, where will o'wisps are gathered up until it is time to release them into their swampy pastures.

42. Grey - Oversized heads, gigantic black eyes, clammy grey skin. About the size of a child. They will sneak into homes in the night, daze people with sleep paralysis, and be a general bother.

43. Uufoo - Discs, rods, pyramids, columns, decorated with glowing spots and coruscating colors. They fly about here and there without direction or purpose that men can gather. Very skittish Folk, they are never on the ground for long.

44. Mothfolk - They cannot stand the gaze of the sun, but love it dearly. On quiet mornings one might see them out on the hills, backs to the east, hoping to feel dawn's warmth before they descend to their burrows.

45. Slender Men - Faceless. Limbs like dead trees. Much, much too tall. Live deep in the woods. Feed on and spread paranoia, said to kidnap children and turn up the occasional mutilated body.

46. Druf - Squat, wide, wrinkly, wispy hair, conniving, shouting, spitting. Wears giant shoes and ill-fitting suits. Hates everyone and everything. Eternal enemy of the krump

51. Krump - Big, lopsided, striped, simple, blunt, brutish. Wear big hats and like cats, but not much else. Eternal enemy of the druf.

52. Mooncalf - Silvery skin, eyes too-widely spaced, gormless lopsided grins.  They never seem to figure out how bones and muscles work, and so flop and tumble their way. Should you see one on the road, give him your coat and he's  pay you in kind eventually.

53. Brindlebrook - Sleek like a mountain cat, they will stalk you through the hills for days, leaving you only glimpses in the twilight.

54. Hullabaloo - About the size of a bear. About the volume of a very, very, very loud bear. About the energy level of something that is far more boisterous than a bear. Bright purple, yellow, pink orange and other sherbet tones.

55. Lost Boys - Their bodies are those of young boys, their faces are those of ancient men. They serve Pan, the Black Goat, and are known for kidnappings, bonfires, wild and raucous hunts.

56. Grubbins - Collect hoards of treasure in their dens. Treasure to a grubbin is mostly refuse and garbage, however, but they take care of it fastidiously and let not a broken button roll out of place. They are very touchy about their precious collections.

61. Marefolk - Of significantly greater variety than landbound painters tend to attribute them, they have been seen with the traits of all manner of fish, sharks, cetacians, mollusks, cephalopods, nudibanchs, pinnepeds, corals, sponges, sirenians, and crustaceans. Those who live further way from the sea tend to fuse syllables and call them merfolk. A fierce band of black and white marefolk serve as Orca's honor guard.

62. Lantern Jacks - The dark coat of a highwayman, a pumpkin for a head with a fire inside. Roam lonely country roads near Goblinswatch, cutlass held high, drunken voice laughing and singing.

63. Lichwatchers - Hunchbacks in filthy grey rags, a single golden eye glowing at the end of a serpentine neck. They perch atop graves and cairns, staff in hand, watching and waiting for the restless dead.

64. Gobsmacker - Nearly perfectly round (or rather, nearly perfectly egg-shaped), they launch themselves through the air at great force with their door-sized hands. Easily identified by raucous laughter approaching from above.

65. Blodfiester - Potbellied  bloodsuckers, whose head is a ball of needles atop a giraffe's neck. Covered in downy feathers, glow read around the stomach.

66. Hidebehind - A docile and gentle creature made entirely unsettling by the fact that it is always behind you and so cannot be seen.

* This is not entirely true. Goblins, like all Folk, do not beget and are neither male nor female - the structure of goblin family is theorized to be a parody of human life. The most commonly held theory is that when a goblin's material form is destroyed, it will be 'born' again from its broodmother. this is also a handy explanation as to why goblins enjoy slapstick violence so much.

Tony DiTerlizzi

Aspect

1. Arctic
2. Bush
3. Desert
4. Mountain
5. Marsh
6. Swamp
7. Freshwater
8. Saltwater
9. Mushroom Jungle
10. Rainforest
11. Deciduous Forest
12. Hills
13. Tundra 
14. Steppe
15. Coral Reef
16. Abyssal Ocean
17. Savanna
18. Coniferous Forest 
19. Temperate Wetlands
20. Urban

Shape 

1. Humanoid
2. Animal
3. Plant
4. Artifact
5. Natural Object
6. Natural Phenomenon
7. Hybrid
8. Other

Words of the World

Humans who spend time among the Folk may learn their secret language. Sages, witches, hermits, shaman, and so on might know some of the following tongues.

1. of Birds and Beasts
2. of Deeps and Waters
3. of Earth and Stones
4. of Fire and Coals
5. of Tree and Flower
6. of Snows and Ice
7. of Skies and Breezes 
8. of Rains and Storms

Class: The Folk

“Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons; it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.”

- Tolkien, On Fairy Stories.

“We do not want merely to see beauty... we want something else which can hardly be put into words- to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses, and nymphs and elves.”

-C.S. Lewis

Xia Chenjie

Class: The Folk

Folk possess only two stats, Forma and Numen (Form and Presence, if you roll that way,).

Forma (FRM): The strength of the Folk's physical manifestation. Folk can withstand damage equal to their FRM before losing their material body. They may re-manifest in FRM / NMN modifier days, rounding up (ignore negatives). When you level up, roll d20: if it is higher than your Forma, increase that score by 1.

Numen (NMN): The strength of the Folk's true being. Tied with the health of their home locus: each act that honors / desecrates this locus will increase / decrease this stat by one. If the modifier is negative, the locus has become polluted and the Folk corrupted. If NMN is reduced to 0, the Folk fades completely and cannot return.

Roll 4d4 for Forma; Numen always begins at 10.You may subtract up to 2 from one score and add it to the other.

Saves are resolved by rolling under the appropriate stat.

Folk do not gain experience or levels: instead, the templates a Folk possesses are equal to its Numen modifier. They will always possess the traits of template 0.

Templates

0) Folk Magic, Words of the World, 2 Power

N1) +1 Power

N2) + 1 Power

N-1) Sickly Nature, -1 Power, +1 Corruption

N-2) Polluted, +2 Corruption

Folk Magic

Certain magics are universal among all of the Folk. They are:

• The ability to change shape as they wish.
• The ability to appear and disappear as they will.
• Knowledge of the language of all birds and beasts.
• The ability to be heard in a man's native tongue.

Folk are tied to their home, whether it be a single tree or an entire biome; they cannot pass far beyond the border of their locus without invoking 2 Power for the duration of their journey.

Words of the World

There is no separation between the Folk and the world, and this is their greatest magic.

Invoking Words of the World requires Power. Power is invoked for as long as the effect is active, and returns when the effect is dispersed. Actions will scale depending on how much Power is invoked.

(This is all just barely tweaked from Kevin Crawford's system in Godbound, by the by.)

• Damage against a single target (1d6 /1d8 / 1d10 / 1d12)
• Damage against multiple targets (1d4 / 1d6 / 1d8 / 1d10)
• Gain armor or defenses (as leather / as chain / as plate / as plate and shield)
• Resist damage or an effect(damage reduction, damage resistance, countering spell effects, etc)
• Hinder or weaken an enemy (Penalties to hit, take extra damage, status effects, etc.)
• Create something
• Change something
• Other

For Folk operating outside of their homes, roll d6 for each point of Power invoked. Dice that come up as 6 are considered burnt until the next day.

Sickly Nature

Folk whose numen has been severely damaged take a 1d6 penalty to all rolls that they make, and they may not leave their home territory.

Corruption acts the same way as Power, though it is fit only for foul and misbegotten uses. When it is invoked, the Folk must make a Numen save, or will lose 1 point in that score.

Polluted Form

At this point the Folk has either faded to near-nothing (and thus cannot / will not act), or embraced its corruption and transformed into an abomination. Some small fragments of its old essence might still remain, but drawing them out is next to impossible.

All those who encounter must make a save vs magic at -4 to avoid contracting sickness or curse, per turn. No save may be made for direct physical contact.

Folk who have reached this level of corruption will often attempt to survive by severing themselves completely from their home. This should not be allowed to happen.

 

tvonn9

 Folk PCs

There are uncountable varieties of the Folk that might be found in the great wide world. I'll have a post detailing some of them later down the line.

The most common Folk that might be found in the company of dungeon hobos and the like will be nymphs, woodwose, brownies, goblins, and talking animals.

Needless to say, any Folk who would end up in such a situation already positively inclined towards humanity - there are more of these than one might think, considering the many alliances Mother made in the distant past.

Outside of fools and the truly foul, Folk traveling in the world of men will be met with great respect.

The greatest threat to the Folk is the growing tumor of Hell - fending off this threat will bring many Folk to call upon mankind for aid, or offer theirs in kind.