Along the River Petrichor: A F-122 Challenge Setting

My response to my own challenge.

BotW

The river Petrichor winds sluggishly southeast across the grasslands. Past those seas of green, there are the hills, and beyond the hills there are the mountains, and then the Great Dust beyond them.

The city states here were built in the shadow of the Old Ones, by their crumbled ruins and long dead war machines. The people here tread lightly on that legacy, for though they are ignorant of that secret history, it is clear that the Old Ones died, either by hubris or their own hand.

Classes

1. Swordwife - Women who have forgone land or marriage for mastery of the blade.
2. Earthsea Mage - Those who know and keep the secret names of all creation.
3. Adipomancer - If magic stored in the body, a vast body means vast magic.
4. Mech Pilot - War machines of the Old Ones still wander the world. Enlist and fight them.
5. Bell Exorcist - Those sworn to quieting the restless dead.
6. Mouse - Quick-pawed, honorable folk from the grasslands.
7. Zouave - Not all is peaceful along the river, nor in the grasslands nor the hills nor beyond.

(This was to keep it all in the GLOG and each one from a different source. Lucky runners up were the Cryptozoologist, the Elephant, the Goblin , the Adept the Canonneer, Sanctioned Cambion, and the Inventor Necromancer.)

The Questions

1.What wizard is anathema?
Dominators, those who use true names to control the actions of other people, are reviled across cultures. They are hunted down without hesitation when they emerge.

2. What existential threat exists that locals don’t understand?
The environment is holding on by a thread thanks to the careless malice of the Old Ones, and is still subject to the poisons and depletion of the Old Ones. Worse, the Old Ones are still alive out among the stars, and in hindsight they consider the billions dead in their wake "acceptable losses".

3. How are membership societies structured for initiates?
Entry into one of the Lodges requires the sponsorship of a member, though ancient compact dictates that all Lodges must grant an audience to all applicants. This is often abused, and there is constant struggle between conservative and new-blood factions. One can always tell there is drama afoot when new Lodges sprout up like mushrooms.

4. What is the highest complexity of metallurgy attained? 
The metals the Old Ones used their machines can be smelted and recast, but not replicated. The most common of these, orichalcum, is lightweight, easily shaped, and resistant to corrosion and damage. Its primary use is in the construction of war machines for the Mech Lodges.

5. What crafts are constrained by resources?
Artistic use of Old One metals can produce some of the most beautiful metalwork crafts in the world, but as nearly all of it goes to weapon making and industrial uses (mechs do not build themselves), it is terrible difficult to acquire more than a few ounces of it at a time.  

6. How do you know someone is a magic user?
Lodge exorcists are easily identified by their regalia, and adipomancers are just huge and terribly hard to miss. True-name wizards are more difficult to identify, but their slow, careful, and respectful manner is easy enough to pick out when one is familiar with the signs.

7. Are ancestors spirits ransomed from the church?
Soul-ransom is the domain of the Ancient Church and has been since only a few centuries after the departure of the Old Ones. What began as a means of placating lost and tormented spirits of that terrible, death-filled era, swiftly became the primary money-maker for the Ancient Church. It was their attitude towards actually leading the dead to rest, and their exploitative stance towards the public, that led to the formation of the Exorcists' Lodge.

8. What cults venerate pleasure?
The venerable House of Red Silk has long been the proprietor of all manner of nightly delights, but in recent years it has been challenged by the bacchanal practices of the Carniphile Carnival

9. Are wizards registered?
The Lodges keep extensive ledgers of their members, but secular authorities go through certain channels to gain access to those records.

10. What foods are associated with major festivals?
Yearlong Eels are caught in the river en masse during the New Year celebrations, to be cleaned and pickled and stowed away so that their fine fermented odor might grace the palate next year.

Fiona's 122 Questions (Plus a Challenge)

Fiona Geist made this list on twitter. Then a second list.

I compiled them into a single list, and then promptly forgot about them because of the collapse of civilization in slow motion. I have remedied this.

Forgetting about the random table, not fixing civilization. Working on that.

The F-122 Challenge

First, you must select 7 classes to replace the seven standard classes. You can have more than 7. For extra fakepoints, they could be all for the same system, or all from different authors, or whatever extra criteria you wish to apply for personal fulfillment purposes.

Then, roll on the below table 10 times, and answer the questions provided, using the classes you chose as the foundation of the culture you are sketching out.

Combine with other random tables as you see fit and desire.

Then make a post and share with the class.

ROLL FOR YOUR FATE

1. What skill is rolled on for rope bondage?
2. Is this society a gift economy?
3. Do they have any cultural taboos?
4. Who are their social pariahs?
5. Where are tailors?
6. Is there a way to avoid traveling by boat?
7. What do heavy mounted infantry ride?
8. Are there entities that buy a human soul?
9. Does anyone buy corpses without questions?
10. Do people pay to see wunderkammer?
11. Are there weapons that work better against armored foes?
12. Is there a mechanic for fighting dishonorably?
13. Is there a mechanic around playing a character with miserable stats?
14. Are there holy fools or other types of weird sacred people?
15. What cults venerate pleasure?
16. What magic trades stability for power?
17. What art movement is causing the most strong reaction?
18. What narcotics are available? Which ones trade power for years?
19. Can I buy ground glass?
    
20. What religious festival is most prominent for the wealthy?
21. the poor? 
22. the largest foreign national community?
23. practiced by the diaspora? 
24. that causes mass return?
25. What are only nobles allowed to own? 
26. Is there an active criminal or taxless market? 
27. What is mass imported and prone to price fluctuations? 
28. What is the staple grain? 
29. What is the most popular leisure activity?
30. What is the highest complexity of metallurgy attained? 
31. What is the most ornate form of ceremonial armor? 
32. What metal is rare? 
33. What is used for coinage? 
34. Is there a temple-bank?
35. What is the cultural perception of wizards? 
36. Are wizards registered? 
37. How are mad wizards disposed of? 
38. What wizard is considered a paragon? 
39. What wizard is anathema? 
40. Are wizards eligible for citizenship?
41. What are the patrician virtues (if any) in the culture?
42. Is there a military cult, sacred band or other theocratic military order? 
43. How is the military organized? 
44. Is the military feared by the state? 
45. Is military service compulsory?
46. What is worth more than financial wealth? 
47. Is loaning with interest legal? 
48. Are private loans legal? 
49. Are debts forgiven on ceremonial or religious occasions? 
50. Are ancestors spirits ransomed from the church? 
51. Are pardons available for crimes? 
52. Is there licensed brigandage?
53. How does inheritance work? 
54. How do marriage contracts relate to property laws? 
55. Is there a socially sanctioned form of theft? 
56. Does wealth grant access to elite social classes or are they hereditary, ceremonial or awarded?
57. How is the body understood? 
58. Are there spiritual afflictions? 
59. Does the culture believe in luck rituals? 
60. What diseases leave marks? 
61. Are there lepers or a similar infected group separated? 
62. Is there a homo sacer? 
63. Is the spirit material? How is medicine learned?
64. Are there socially stigmatized groups of people for an inheritable trait? 
65. What cosmetics or prosthetics are used to hide marks of aging, scarring or amputations? 
66. What are the cultures spiritual afflictions? 
67. How is “age” understood? 
68. Are there Sin Eaters or Snake Oil Salesmen?
69. How are covens, universities, apprenticeships, mystery cults and research societies structured for initiates? 
70. How do you know someone is a magic user?
71. Do they sell their souls? Eat devils? Bargain with gods & minor divinities? Become intoxicated?
72. What sort of scholars are there?
73. Are they connected to church authorities or as court functionaries? 
74. Are they a religious order? 
75. What are the standards of scholarship? 
76. What technology is eroding traditional society or being acclimated to it?
77. Is murder available for hire? 
78. As individuals or professional organization? 
79. Are there criminal brotherhoods or street gangs or bandit clans that hire out members? 
80. How is labor contracted? 
81. Who is allowed to contract?
82. What behavior’s punishment do other cultures consider unnecessarily harsh? 
83. How is the law executed by an individual charged with representing the state or an independent institutions? 
84. Do you hire barristers? Are priests involved? 
85. Is trial by combat or another alternate legal?
86. What is the recreational drug abuse your culture has organized meetings around? 
87. What is considered a negative habit imported from another culture? 
88. How are addicts treated? 
89. Is a bar tab used to hire on cannon fodder or sailors? 
90. What is the most taboo Vice?
91. What functionary has the most individuals financially interested in their death?
92. What is the local menace? 
93. What borders are unclear? 
94. What existential threat exists that locals don’t understand?
95. Are there ongoing conflicts and can individuals hire into an organization or pledge troops in exchange for plunder? 
96. How are soldiers usually paid? 
97. Are there honor duels or other ceremonial or cultural combats as an outlet for symbolic war? 
98. What area is seditious?
99. Is gambling legal?
100. What competitive game is considered contemplative? 
101. What sport do street children play? 
102. What Bloodsports are legal? 
103. What illegal bloodsports do elites favor? 
104. Is the breeding of fighting animals part of husbandry or specialized? 
105. Is it religiously sanctioned?
106. What populist messianic tendencies, elite conspiracies, intelligence service or spy rings and noble plots are likely to get a lot of people killed?
107. What religions are undergoing messianic Times?
108. What mystery cult has been imported? What syncretic tradition is emerging?
109. What street food is sold? 
110. Are coffee, tea, alcohol or other drinks sold in ceremonial locations? 
111. What do the starving scavenge? 
112. What is the nicest meal most citizens can attempt? 
113. What foods are associated with major festivals? What slaughter animals do poor families raise?
114. What artworks were stolen by a neighboring civilization? 
115. What crafts are practiced? What crafts are lost? 
116. What crafts are constrained by resources? 
117. What lost item is associated with your foundational myths? 
118. What cursed item is in your cultures saddest songs?
119. Who rules the area and how much of their wealth is material and how much is symbolic?
120. Are there other species that collect valuables? 
121. Are there resources harvested from “monsters”? 
122. Are there monsters that have been sealed off in desolate places?
     

Build a Witch Challenge: Maggie Blackthorn

Saw a challenge, did a challenge.

What's her name?

Maggie Blackthorn

What kind of witch is she?

Village midwife, wise woman, goat-keeper and provider of solutions.

What does she look like?

A little old woman, face brown and wrinkled as a walnut, a red scarf worn over the silver hair that hangs down in two braids. A heavy coat of dark blue, embroidered with the snowflake-like white sigils that the shepherd-mages have always worn. Heavy leather boots, well-worn.

A tall, strong-armed woman, sunset-red hair in a bun. Gone a bit soft around the middle. A sharp nose. A few missing teeth from an incident with a horse a while back. A black greatcoat and wide-brimmed hat from the south; a wedding gift. Heavy leather boots, well-worn.

A girl of ten with fiery hair no comb can tame nor braid maintain. More freckles than any sensible person would know what to do with. A white dress tailored for easy girding, with work trousers underneath. Heavy leather boots that still need a few years to fit right.

Where does she live?

In a log and sod cabin a little bit north of the village of Cormorant Tull, on the edge of the pine forest, just across the strip of open space from the seaside cliffs.

What kind of wand does she use? 

A cane of polished white pine. Everyone in town knows the rap-tap on the doorpost that signifies her arrival.

What's in her cauldron?

Perpetual stew.

What kind of familiar does she have?

Bear, a gigantic shaggy black dog who is always by her side. Is big enough that Sophie can still ride him around like a pony.

What is her dark secret?

Maggie Blackthorn has been the village witch for the last forty years, ever since Goodwife Constance died. Like any true witch she's the axis mundi of the community, but also like any true witch, she is very, very human.

See, the black fever swept through the county two summers ago. Maggie pulled off some miracles in those months, but eventually there is a limit to how far a witch can stretch a miracle. And always a cost. The world doesn't play by the rules of just reward, where miracle-workers get a bit of slack from the dice rolls of the old gods.

Maggie's daughter Mary caught ill, and then her granddaughter Sophie. Both bedridden with the fever, and with Tom out to sea, there was no one but Maggie, already spread too thin treating the rest of the village to care for them.

The toll is paid, and black fever works swiftly. It only a took a few days to work its course.

Mary and Sophie died within hours of each other. Maggie was there at the bedside when they went, but that was no consolation. Witches are old friends with death, they have to be to sit vigil, but witches are human and humans have breaking points that will never heal right.

Imagine the flickering lamplight of a dark cabin, in the suffocating darkness of night, and the words that might be said in desperation to comfort a child on their deathbed. 

And by that bedside Maggie broke. There was nothing to be done, not with the craft she practiced, but witches keep themselves abreast of the other powers. In the stillness of that dark cabin, Maggie weaved a spell that she might not ever be able to cast again: one that could revive the bodies of her daughter and granddaughter. There's nothing to be done to bring back the dead, but a body is meat and bone and blood and water are electric charge, and that can be stirred back into life.

To those brain-dead bodies Maggie bound her mind so that she could to jump between Maggie and Mary and Sophie, leaving two in a state like deep slumber and one awake and and aware. Whether that was her end goal, or simply what she was forced to settle with, no one knows.

You'll see Mary and Sophie walking around town alive as you or I, but it's Maggie behind the eyes. Folks in the village know, but they don't talk about it much. They are still grieving, just as Maggie is.

She might very well be immortal now, though she's not sure how far the spell can be stretched.

1d8 Things the PCs are interrupting

1. Milking the goats (Mary)
2. Weeding the garden (Sophie)
3. Giving advice to expectant first-time mother (Maggie)
4. Re-sodding the roof (Mary)
5. Being overly-precocious to door-to-door missionaries (Sophie)
6. Teaching herbs to the village children (Maggie)
7. Setting a farmhand's broken leg (Any)
8. Lowtide beachcombing, looking for fossils (Any)

1d6 Potions

1. Perpetual Stew - Warm and filling.
2. Contraceptive - Always be responsible!
3. Soothing Salve - Calms the nerves, centers the mind, drives away fear, makes sleep easy to come by.
4. Last-Chance Purgative - Cleans you out at both ends. You'll be miserable, but you won't be dying of poison.
5. Puckbrew - A mix of milk, honey, and whiskey, sure to lure out any nearby brownies, boggarts, hobs, pucks, goblins, pucas, and other
6. Special Sheep Liniment - Shared only with the trusted few.

1d6 Rumors & Hooks

1. Bear found a man no one knows on death's door, Maggie's been nursing him back to health.
2. Folks are seeing less and less of Mary, wondering if she's getting ill or the spell is weakening.
3. "Devil in the woods! Great leathery wings and a horses head, up in the pine woods past Maggie's!"
4. Black-cloaked outriders from the Dreg Legion have set up camp north of town. Maggie's been negotiating with them. Everyone's afraid it won't be enough.
5. Maggie says there's a freak snowstorm on the way, everyone needs to stay indoors, and shutter your windows tight.
6. Maggie's found herself a fourth body...

1d4 Spells

1. Goblin Door - Under the right slice of moon and the right time of night, the tumble of stones on the hillside can be turned into a door to the Goblin Market.
2. Kulning - Calls together a herd of cattle / sheep / goats / etc.
3. Eye on the Lintel - A glyph that will allow the maker to sense whenever someone passes through the marked doorway.
4. Bond Beyond Death - A delicate and difficult ritual that will allow the practitioner to link their soul with other bodies, so long as the bodies are very recently dead

Secret Jackalope 2020: Primates of the Post-Paracausal Paradox Peninsula

The Jackalope cares not for the revival of life and the coming of spring. Jackalope cares only for BLOG POSTS, so that they might rival their nemesis the SANTICORE!

I have been granted a missive! Kirt "Loki Dankmyer requests the following:

3+ monsters appropriate for a post-apocalyptic setting where mankind wiped itself out with reality-warping weapons. Useful but not required (highly optional): Stats formatted for high compatibility with Knave, any humanoids are based on primates OTHER than humans (chimps, gorillas, monkeys, etc.), unique "high technology indistinguishable from magic" treasures to match the monsters

Shepherds of the Red Orb

4' tall aye-ayes wander in the night in bands of 6-10, each with a small red marble like a droplet of blood above their head. They are armed with clubs and bear unlit lanterns, and wear hideous golden masks and flowing indigo robes. Each band is accompanied by a Red Orb, which floats above the ground without apparent source.

HD 1 HP 5 AC None
Club 1d4, horrific face (save vs WIS or be paralyzed, one use per group)

If one comes into possession of a red marble, it will take place above their own head and begin transmitting messages from the network of Red Orbs - these will be incomprehensibly scrambled at first, but will coalesce within a few hours into knowledge of the location of other Red Orbs and their respective bands of shepherds. More importantly it will imply the existence of great sources of unclaimed Red Orbs, and compel the bearer to seek them out (CHA save to resist, repeats daily). Marbles can only be destroyed in intense heat (magma forges etc)

Cuttlechimps

The remnants of an uplift project gone screwy in the post-paracausal paradox. Their current shape is that of a hairless ape with a cuttlefish for a head, possessing all of the color and texture changing abilities of their mollusc components and all the social mentalities and tool usage of the primates.

HD 2 HP 10 AC Leather
Augmented limbs 1d6, laser eye 1d6


Attempting to locate a hidden cuttlechimp without some sort of technological aid is an INT or WIS roll at disadvantage.

Cuttlechimps tend to make their homes in the now-overgrown and flooded facilities that first spawned them, which means that they tend to be found in close proximity to devices such as gensplice tanks, autoassistants, simulation datacards and devotional AIGOD rosaries.

Orangutan Technomancer

Greatest of the surviving great apes, the old men of the forest have gained a mastery of the secrets of the Hu machines. Channeling their program-sutras through their Staves of Might, they command legions of robotic salvagefolk and build themselves great fortresses in the rusting trees of those deep chrome jungles.

HD 2 HP 15 AC Leather + Shield
Augmented limbs 1d6

Staves of Might permit the wearer to issue simple commands to any active robotic beings or computer systems as if they had administrative privileges. They may maintain control over devices equal to their WIS modifier. They may also make a CHA roll to forcibly take over a device that is controlled by another practitioner.

Thirteen Items

Months ago, Michael Prescott issued a challenge to make the most evocative setting possible using a 13-item inventory.

I am nothing if not exceedingly timely and on the ball.

The Possessions of Sen Mazzaroth, Wanderer

1. Acupuncture Needles and Thread

The golden needles and silver thread favored by the chirurgeons of Iln is hard to come by, especially by foreigners, and all the more desired for their potency in cleaning the spirit and drawing out corruptions.

2. Bottled Demon

Steeped in its own liquor, the putrescent bruise-blue embryo still glares through the murk with burning gold eyes and serrated smile. It offers a boon if released.

3. Hand-Woven Scarf

Long nights of work by one beloved went into this long strip of scarlet and gold. The family histories going back eight generations are embroidered in careful calligraphy, ending in the twined circles of rings.

4. Horned Pilgrimage Mask

A plain mask, lacquered white. Such masks serve three purposes: The first is to maintain the Law of Humility whilst traveling abroad. The second is to denote the profession of the wearer, by shape. The last is to state their purpose, by color. 

5. Patched Traveling Clothes

Insulated against cold, repaired against damage, over and over again. With enough time, all kin of the road wear the same garments.

6. Obsidian Sword

Certain smithing enchantments will draw the shattered fragments of such a weapon back into a whole piece. This one was clearly performed by a master, for it draws upon all seven humours of the soul.

7. Red Ocarina

Certain melodies, when played on instruments made of clay from the sacred river Gyensol, allows for the calling up and binding of misborn and miscarried spirits. They flock to it as if to the distant call of a mother.

8. Road Cakes

A small loaf of this dense black bread can be rationed out over days. It tastes faintly of honey from the high hidden valleys

9. Icon of Safety

The terrible appearance of this leering visage is more than enough to scare away most nightly ambushers. The ancestral memory of the monsters that once worse such faces is still strong.

10. Rosary of Fire-Pearls

A mantra to collect the mind, a mantra for the emptying of vessels, a mantra for seeking of secrets.

11. Golden Bell

The clerics of the gods in the Oubliette are known to carry these ritual tools while making their rounds. How did it arrive here on the surface?

12. Iron Rod Rifle

The gunpowder societies of the Delta keep their secrets, leading other armies to unorthodox alternatives. The weapons of the Edhaspar Regulars launch white-hot iron spikes at speeds below sound, spawning dozens of widespread cliches about porcupines and pincusions.

13. Sturdy Boots

Tradition has it that every cobbler who repairs a wanderer's boots will apply their brand to the leather, making a permanent mark of the roads they have traveled.

The Florentine

Evlyn started up a project where folks would write up author avatars and the assorted Lovecraftian tomes they had authored. Since Evlyn has only recently returned to Twitter, I don't know if there's been any more talk or progress on it. Hopefully this will jumpstart other people to join in.

Domenico Frazzini

(b. 1460 d. 1516) 

Few details of Frazzini's life as a minor clerk in the Arte del Cambio survive. His poetry gained little traction in the Florence of his day and in the following centuries languished in obscurity. The fragments of his letters paint a picture of a man withdrawn from general social life for the company of a small circle of close friends, beset by fits of melancholy and chronic insomnia and with little love for the trade he found himself in. (From one of his letters: "How I hate the florin. I cannot think clearly with the clink of gold in my ears.") At some point in his early life he had intended to become a monk, but for unclear reasons chose a different path. Later documents contain spirited critique of church corruption. It was in the dreams and daydreams of the landscapes and inhabitants of fantastic worlds, and in the poetry inspired by them, that he found his great escape.

The date of Frazzini's death is known, but not the cause. It's suspected to be from complications caused by years of stress and lack of sleep.

Bibliography

The majority of Frazzini's works were destroyed during the Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497. The surviving poetry and letters were left in the care of his close friend, Giacomo Betori. These were then compiled into the form he is most known for.

The Little Dream Book / Piccolo Libro dei Sogni

• Journey to the Moon - A comedic picaresque adventure wherein a peasant girl travels to the moon to free her betrothed, who was imprisoned there by horrible toadlike monsters. On her way she encounters a pair of Egyptian priests, an enchanted forest, a band of talking rats, and other such picaresque adventures. It is Frazzini's longest surviving work.
• The Republic of Cats - A political satire where barely-renamed notable Florentines are rendered as cats deciding what to do while the owner of the house is away. Naturally, they come to no conclusions and all fall asleep long before the man's return.
• The Androphagi - An account of the man-eaters who live "south of the world and below the world", as told by a visitor in their lands. The Court of the Marrow King is convened to throw a feast in the visitor's honor, and unable to contain his disgust the visitor flees through subterranean warrens, pursued by the Marrow King's soldiers and glimpsing even more horrific sights before reaching the safety of the sun above.
• The Golden Lady - A short poem from Frazzini to his wife, expressing his affection and admiration for her. If nothing else, it seems that they were happy together.
• Tambifilotopa - A nonsense poem describing the bizarre creatures that live in the enchanted forest featured in "Journey to the Moon".
• Across the Burning Desert - A trading caravan is beset by water thieves, and the merchants find that the god they carry with them has gone silent. Ends in uncertainty as night falls and the moonlight reveals amorphous shapes among the rocks.
• House of the Spider - The spider in question never appears, but the house and all its decrepitude are described in great detail. A pair of goat-eyed men from a distant duchy arrive to hunt down the spider (against the counsel of the townsfolk) and are last seen entering through the front door.
• The Worms that Duel - A town suffers a devastating earthquake, caused by a pair of miles-long worms, one black and one white, fighting each other deep beneath the ground.
• The Devil Arrives - A nameless Tuscan town is visited on Carnivale night by a man whose clothes are black are tar and whose scarf is red like a bloodied tongue. He offers boons to anyone who asks; those who accept the offer find themselves cursed by misfortune or madness. As he leaves, the man delivers a message from his "old master, blind, deaf and dumb" - but this is written in indecipherable scribbles.
  
• Flight - An aging Frazzini in declining health describes his sleeping spirit flying out of his body and soaring over the lands he has explored in earlier years, holding on to a night's freedom before he must return to mortality.
• Notes and Letters - Precisely that.

Editions

• Original Manuscript - Handwritten. Everything that avoided the bonfire and made its way to Betori's care.
• 1550 First Printing - Betori's grandson edits the surviving manuscripts into a single work and oversees a small printing of The Little Dream Book.
• Translations
• 1760 - Initial rediscovery and translation into English and French.
• 1833 - Bowlderized run, no known surviving copies and they were awful anyway.
• 1879 - A second, more faithful English translation. Treated as the standard, available on Gutenberg Project.
• Modern translations
• 1974 - A scholarly edition, with footnotes and everything.
• 1999 - Republished version of the 1974 text.
• 2017 - New English translation with the Italian on the opposing page. Has been translated into 9 additional languages. 

Random Tables from Twitter: Part 3, Enterprises Edition

Buckle up folks, it's a double header via @imaginaryhallw1

d20 Things Underworlders Desperately Need

1. Fresh fruits and vegetables
2. Vitamin supplements (C&D especially)
3. News and mail from the surface
4. Soap, toothpaste, toilet paper
5. Spices and seasonings
6. Water filters 
7. Canned food and dried goods
8. Antiseptics and OTC meds
9. Tampons, pads, birth control
10. Underwear and socks
11. Replacement computer components
12. Smut
13. Batteries, chargers, adapters
14. Music, movies, games, books
15. Up-to-date maps and guides
16. Ammunition
17. Camping supplies
18. Magical reagents
19. Memetic vaccinations
20. Translators, doctors, therapists

d20 Paranormal Youtube Rabbit Holes

1. Fleshcrafter beauty / workout vlogs.
2. The Dero got into the  Indian nursery rhyme spam accounts again...
3. Stygian Library explorations with the Book Club.
4. Ynnian gardening tips.
5. Those idiots trying to do the King in Yellow in 15 second clips.
6. In-depth literary and lore analysis of Madotsuki's dream diary.
7. Identifying underworld graffiti tags.
8. That one guy who homebrews his own space mead.
9. Clips from a popular delver podcast, animated in SFM.
10. Official channel of the Lithic embassy at Bárðarbunga. The ambassador really loves his flintbirds.
11. Livestream of a silent delver's campsite. They wear a mask and occasionally play the banjo.
12. Mad scientists unboxing and testing new tools.
13. Ghost hunter drama channels.
14. Investigations into missing delvers, attempting to find what happened to them.
15. Faerie sightings, plus the creepy fandom around them.
16. Obvious serpentmen-created homunculi attempting social engineering
17. People really into occult cryptocurrency.
18. Underworld cooking channels
19. Technomancer-modified Let's Plays
20. Lo-Fi Cult Music Study and Chill Infinite Mix

Random Tables from Twitter: Part 2

The sequel to part 1.

d10 Dread Staves

(via @lithyscape)

1. Hawthorn with a skull on top.
2. Thin obsidian dowel.
3. Petrified wood nymph.
4. Dragonbone double helix.
5. Elm with a hand of glory.
6. Quicksilver needle.
7. Hunchbacked spine.
8. Pitchfork with a bloody history.
9. Rusted drill shaft.
10. A coiled diamond 

d10 Methods For Getting Out of Funks

(via @will_brunn)

1. Exercise.
2. Changing routine.
3. Spending time with friends.
4. Meditation.
5. Getting more sleep.
6. Playing with animals.
7. Listening to new music.
8. Have a good cathartic cry.
9. Medication.
10. Positive existentialism. 

d10 Ynnian Pathways

(via @macpheed)

1. March of the Ladybugs - A red-and black carpet of beetles forms a roadway under your feet.
2. Bramble Tunnel - The thorns tear at your clothing and skin. Take 1 Flesh damage.
3. Topiary Road - Winding gravel lined with beautifully-cut images of your friends and family.
4. Around-the-Vast-Oak - Walk around the trunk counter-clockwise, and you'll end up where you're going.
5. The Garden Gate - An iron gate set in an ivy-choked brick wall.
6. The Snake - A big old snake head. Walk into its mouth, its throat becomes
7. The Deluge - Black, pregnant storm clouds burst open, washing players away to the next region.
8. The Meadow - A wide field of grass and pale flowers under a bright midmorning sun
9. Pond of the Sword-Naiad - A wooden bridge over a placid green pond. It's inhabitant has a 50% chance of chucking a magical sword at someone in the party.
10. A Dirt Trail in a Darkened Wood - Nothing unusual but the shadows of your own head.

 d10 Art styles for Underworld Gangs

(via @cherok_a4)

1. Lascaux cave paintings
2. Hellenist amphora paintings
3. Dogū figures
4. Art deco
5. Ukio-E
6. Impressionist
7. Brutalist
8. Classical Egyptian
9. Gothic stained glass
10. Outsider art

Random Tables from Twitter: Part 1

I've been feeling dreary and uninspired of late, so I took to twitter to get some requests for random tables. Here's the first batch.

d6 Reasons Lord Cobain and Lady Malton Confiscate all Horses of Visitors to the Stranded Isles 

(via @shutteredroom)

1. Epona is worshiped here, all horses are hers by right.
2. Very little can live here. The Lord and Lady have a taste for fresh meat.
3. Those horses were theirs in the first place.
4. It's a tradition dating back to the Iron Years. Just a formality nowadays.  
5. They are specialized cavalry psychopomps. War ravages the waking world.
6. They honestly don't know.

d10 Strange Potion Containers 

(via @anxietywizard)

1. Insulated thermos
2.  Hollow basilisk skull
3. Cow's udder
4. Miniature aquarium
5. Portable puddle
6. Quantum glassware
7. Compressed beadlets
8. Squeezed from a stone
9. Psychedelic cactus
10. Breastfruit

d10 Magic Bullets (for EE, obviously) 

(via @imaginaryhallw1)

1. Gun-Saint fingerbones - Counts as blessed.
2. Dissolvershot - Dissolves into mist after impact.
3. Segmentation rounds - Bullets can split in two at a -2 to hit and 1 damage die penalty
4. Moonlight bullets - As cold iron vs fae or ghosts.
5. Needle ammo - Pierces armor.
6. Plague rounds - Carries a disease, one per ammunition unit.
7. Foamshot - Save vs stunning as it rapidly expands and hardens.
8. Delayed reaction ammunition - Hits target 30 seconds after it is fired.
9. Brimstone bullets - Catches fire on contact with air.
10. The Legendary - A bullet that was used to kill a notable figure.

d10 Rumors about the Sea goddess' Temple 

(via @marshallbrengle)

1. There are pearls the size of a fist down there!
2. The rooms surrounding the sanctum are a gigantic puzzle.
3. Yeah! Makin' out with merfolk!
4. Access is granted only by casting fresh blood on the coral doors.
5. The cyclops stonemason who built it still lives on-site.
6. Rare fish swim through the corridors as if the air was water.
7. It has been swallowed up by an enormous whale!
8. Sludge spirits from local industrial cites infest and desecrate the temple.
9. Priests of the rival earth god have been camping outside and issuing challenges for weeks.
10. A star declaring a miraculous spawning has risen.

Pandeimos - A New New Crobuzon

So Jack and Anne brought up this old post on Discord with talk of making a blog challenge. Some other people have done it too, listed here.

• New Twain
• City of Stones and Spirits
• City of Emination
• The Last City
• Thaw
• Unnamed City
• The City by the Styx

When Terror Came

Pandeimos is a city that would have been a killing blow. It was the vanguard of Vastoprian's colonial invasion force, prepared to strip the savanna bare, blacken the bay with industrial filth, and tidily clear living space with alchemically-engineered plagues. Would have been. Its distant imperial parent collapsed less than a decade after its founding, when the Red Leviathan rose from the ocean and the Five-Nation Alliance swept in from the northeast with its own armies. There hasn't been any official contact since then. The few refugees are tight-lipped about what happened.

Pandeimos is a half-finished city. Without additional supplies from Vastoprian, and with all the imperial contract-mages dead in the riots, the brutal black metal buildings typical of the empire were not able to complete their growth. The factories are stunted, the walls incomplete, the soldier-hives too cramped to function. The other half - the characteristic stone buildings with high-peaked red-gold tiled roofs, built in tiers along the hillside - comes from the colonists, mostly Binni-Tadhi who had been forcibly relocated after their country was flooded by dam construction.

Three Humanoid Minorities

• Illumian - The scribal caste, intended as functionaries and bureaucrats within the empire's vast offices and as assistants to its contracted mages. They are the chief controllers and practitioners of literacy (for the empire took care to render comprehension of unspelled writing impossible, and this taboo remains in effect post-independence). There aren't, unfortunately, enough of them to safely maintain the structure of the city over a long period of time. Cracks are already starting to form as the paperwork piles up.

• Mul - The slave caste of Vastoprian. Whenever a conquered population was considered too intractable, they were thrown in with the criminals and domestic dissidents and bred with the last remnants of the dwarven mead-unions to birth those who would carry the empire upon their backs. There are no words to express the hatred within the hearts of those muted multitudes, and so it has been expressed in the form of a god. A dark and venge-full thing served by the warlocks trained in those darkened slave-pits and factories.

• Gnoll - The first waves of plague wiped out a quarter of the population and drove the survivors deep into the savanna. Those that live in the city now are here because there is little choice - the plague is still out there, as is starvation and warfare. That the city is technically free of its parent empire is meaningless to them, as the damage has already been done. The Reform Party, still in power but only tenuously after the most recent elections, has made a platform of outreach and repatriation to the gnolls, but progress has been slow.

Other Beings

• Giant Sea Urchin - A common pest in the city. All that's needed is moisture and refuse, and the city has plenty. They will affix themselves to walls, fill up alleyways, cling to eaves and doorframes. They're decent eating if you can get past the spines - the homeless of Pandeimos form hunting parties nearly every day, and the government sets aside a small amount of cash to repay them for pest removal.

• Stitched Devil - Vastoprian, for all its advantages, was never particularly skilled at demonology. Their contract-mages were persistent, though. Their summonings failed catastrophically, splattering infernal viscera all over as the summoned beings burst apart due to differences in pressure and atmosphere. What parts could be recovered were bathed in alchemical reagents and stitched together into something that passed for a functioning whole, though what resulted was hardly capable of imparting knowledge or writing up contracts. After the contract-mages were all hung in Baker's Square, their experiments vanished into the winding side streets where the sun never shines, living off of stray cats and the thin miasma of sin given off by petty thieves and adulterers.

• Gargoyle - A resurgent remnant of Binni-Tadhi religious practice that the empire was not able to snuff out. The statues are appointed with bundles of dried herbs and sacred dyes and made vessels of the spirits of the family ancestors. From their perches on the roof they keep watch out for burglars and snatchgrabber ghosts. They cannot speak, but there is a familiarity that can't be precisely named - it is as if a beloved grandparent is asleep in the next room. Those who lose their family will search out another household to carry out the rites, and the mourning cries of these lost creatures trickle through the dark hours of the night.

10 Monster Setting

Time to throw my hat in the ring for the 10-Monster Setting. I'll be picking from the 3.5 bestiaries, because those books are silly buggers and good for a laugh.

• Semi-intelligent humanoid - Orcwort
• Undead - Graveyard Sludge
• Giant/ogre/troll race - Fomorian
• Great wyrm or lizard - Fiendwurm
• Something aerial - Windghost
• Something to lurk in the water - Ocean Strider
• Something from another dimension - Arcadian Avenger
• Ancient fey - Banshrae
• Classic mythology- Maenads
• Underworld  - Living Blasphemy

My god, this is a proper hellscape and a half.

Let's see...

The Green River, Dancing Jungle, and the Mountains of Sin

The region was first settled by the ancestors of the fomorians, long before they were driven into their mountain caves and away from the sun. They are barely clinging on now, and the ruins of their cities and canals and plantation farms can still be seen in the lowlands along the Green River.

It's dangerous to go much further than a mile or two from the riverbank: the wilderness is overrun with orcwort trees (an invasive pest species, but also a primary food source for human settlers on the Green River.) Furthermore, the thick forests are mastered by the banshrae and their maenad consorts. Locals know from their earliest childhood know how to close up their ears with beeswax, to drown out the daemonic whine of the pipes and the rhythmless thumping of distant drums that dictate the endless dances that have given the region its name.

What caused the creation of the living blasphemies is lost to time - the fomorians might still know, but they do not seem ready to confess their ancient sins to the world. They emerge in the deep jungle sometimes, in the old ruins and in the caves deep below and up in the mountains. The emergence of a blasphemy brings shortly with it an arcadian avenger, or several, to strike the manifested sin down. They do not care to avoid collateral damage, and have no real desire to interact with the human settlers. They don't even seem to care all that much about the fomorians, perhaps believing that they in their inbred decline have already been punished enough. The god or gods they serve go unnamed and unspoken.

A secondary effect of the blasphemies is the raising of the dead - anyone interred in the soil or left alone is raised as a graveyard sludge after a swift cycle of decay. Cremations are the order of the day, on pyres filled with grave goods made of the purple, papery dried hides of the orcworts.

Reaching the settlements on the Green River, or leaving them for that matter, is an increasingly difficult task. Several clans of ocean striders have taken up residence on the reefs around the Green River's mouth and have proven quite belligerent to all sea travel and trade, unless sufficient gifts and tribute are provided to them.

There is a fiendwurm up in the mountains, tainted perhaps by the same sins that form the living blasphemies. It certainly doesn't complain about the tribute that the fomorians give it, but what it really wants is an archpriest. Someone ought to go steal one.

The windghosts that live in the skies above the riverlands are significantly more colorful than their bleaker northern cousins. They swarm above the river during their mating season in the late spring, inspiring the raucous and debauched Festival of Kites, the start of the riverlander new year.

A minipost on 40k Ecology

As requested by Evlyn M.

Galactic ecology is akin to a hive city: layers built upon layers built upon layers that have collapsed and fused together so that it has become more or less impossible to separate them, but not so fused that one cannot scrape aside the current state of affairs to see what lies beneath.

Each civilization follows the same pattern. They spread out from their homeworld, bringing with them all manner of pets, pests and other animals with them. Alien ecologies are either wiped out or integrated upon contact; those brought along for the ride spread further afield, and through intent, chaos incursion, or the typical turns of nature, drift from their original forms.

Transplantation is the name of the game.

Then that civilization collapses, and the biosphere stops spreading, and changes become more pronounced. The same animal brought to two different Necrontyr worlds could result in hundreds of different descendant species each, given enough time.

Then a new civilization comes along, and the cycle repeats. They introduce their own local life forms, alien life is further transplanted between the worlds of the new civilization, and this continues until that civilization also collapses.

Repeat cycle, add chaos to taste.

In terms of where this leaves us practically regarding the dark and grim ecology of the 41st millennium, it's a clusterfuck.

The Eldar, Slann, Necrontyr, C'Tan, and Old Ones all came before and all left behind vast swathes of their own biomes, all of which have shifted over time. For several of them, their cast-off pets have evolved into sapient species of their own right, with their own growing civilizations. The Imperium itself comes and goes in great waves, so many of its worlds have had mass introductions and transplantations multiple times over. Then there are the Tau, who integrate everyone they come in contact with (and thus spread a huge hybrid biosphere among their controlled territories) Orks and Tyranids just make more of themselves ad infinitum.

In short, it's likely that only obscure worlds of the galaxy have a native biosphere. Everyone else is using some gigantic chimeric clusterfuck, as it right and proper for the setting.

Poetry Challenge

(This is in response to David McGrogan's poetry RPG challenge)

Of Rules

Strength / agility / intellect / will
All at ten they shall rest still.
Take an attribute and add to it one
Move one point to another and look there, you're done.

Modifiers equal stat minus ten
Easy, yes? Listen again.
Skills come from your background, nothing new
Make up a profession, and this step's through.

Strength marks your health, agility defense
Intellect perception and will good sense.
Each night heal a quarter of max
Lost to sharp sword and biting axe

The target number sits at ten
Roll your d-twenty, add mod, and then
Apply d6 for each boon and bane.
(Watch that your luck doesn't wane.)

Go out to the wild, level up by achievement
Dig through a dungeon and watch where the time went.
The rest you'll find within the book
Open it up, give it a look.

If that won't do, just use what you know.
My job is done, give it a go.

Of The World

1

The fishermen were here first
They have a sacred bird called the phoenix

Stars above, below the pyres burn
Orange night sky glimmers to the west with distant lightning, somewhere out to sea
Manticores have a melodious call, like the lower notes on a flute.
Greenhouse atmosphere smells of sweet nectar and rot

This district was the center of the cult of the river goddess
I can hardly believe those dusty old highways led to such a lush and lively place
Professional and amateur humanists existed side by side
In the flaming distant past the landscape had been twisted all over the place
The great houses abandoned the city for country estates
Several times it decayed, then burgeoned again
A pillar rises like a petrified tree; its tip vanishes in the oak forest's treetops.
In undersea interfaces, you get chitinous cruciform organisms.

Oh, a night upon the town wouldn’t do us any harm.
You'll greet the sun with bottles high.

More of the Tall Castle lies below ground than above
Beyond the gates wide passages ran down to high halls and chambers
Winding tunnels, ceilings of mud propped with rickety beams
The Sect turned this section of dungeon into a verdant paradise
The lucky prisoners had a window in their cells

2

"No, man: Mother Warriors.
Men are too preoccupied with their swords.
Her eyes are never closed in slumber, and by day she perches, watching from tower or battlement,
Armored above and below with iron scales and hard gems.”

The code consists of four parts

1. Let that which is born alive to human parents be suffered to live
2. You lack perspective! You gotta walk the bottom if you want ta see the top!
3. Keep my eyes open, keep my ears sharpened; there's nothing to fear but fear itself
4. The only difference between war and murder is the number of dead

The doctrine, and the impassioned melodies of the prophet, spread like fire.

There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut.
He feels them newly born; awake again after years; just returned form lives of exile.

The angel of the south came on followed by his hosts, the kumbhandas, mounted upon blue steeds.
Across the restaurant, a prostitute in a red nightgown yawned prodigiously.
“I'm a sinner, finished my dinner, now I can go outside.”

What do you get when you combine sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal? Immortality.
Lord Golden was little pleased with this, but there was nothing he could do.
A great desire came over him to climb the tower and see the Sea.
Never had plans for a normal life.

The revolutionaries had created fierce mercenary cyborgs, who slaughtered thousands
They tore the sacred standard from his dead hand and carried it away.

There is such a thing as a tesseract.
Oh God all-mighty, I've never seen something so dangerous in my life.
A man has to die when he sees something like that.

(Bibliomaniac: someone with a lunatic's passion for acquiring books.)
Ancient tomes, waiting out there for some brave souls to come and salvage them!
(The coins are a red herring)
(The soil and salt were an ancient tradition to keep ghosts away)
How easily treasure buried in the ground, gold hidden however skillfully, can escape from any man!

Many miles away, something crawls from the slime.
The monstrous Thing, having thus consumed the body, turned to the offerings, and ate them also.
He's up there, building an artificial heart to keep the sun alive.

"How do you guys like your clown meat?"
"All chewy-ooey-gooey." 

3

I've been knocking on that door in my sleep
I died a thousand times, I did what I had to do
A fella like me really needs a good chopper this time of year.
Can't you see I've been classically trained?
(Destinations are for stronger souls than mine)

“What's this babble of alliances with the suns and treaties with the moon?”
“Astrology's the core of all religion.”

“Do you believe the Mountain Queen's false promises?
A rich ring she offered him, of red gold fashioned...”
“We are three times the slaves of the owner of the Golden Cap...”
“This generation is called to import hippos and eat them...”
“These are off-world concerns, here we must take the towers!”

“Have mercy, a devil is devouring my bowels!”
"You and your ancestors treated the world like a fucking great toilet bowl!
Them gods gonna hurt ya, son, when you play with a loaded gun!”

4

The cripple waited politely for the scratching of the clerk's quills to finish.
“Anum had been destroyed by his fellow angels, but his right hand had survived...”

There was no Dragon Army.
There's nothing central about it, as it transpires.

Little is known of the Executioners.
There aren't many and they are all horrifyingly dangerous
Their skin and eye colors are due to a chemical reaction to an oxygen atmosphere
They had flayed the tattooed skin from his back
They live in a more enlightened era, when the practice of legalized murder is no longer tolerated.

Great Voices were the whales.
They made it through, their baptism with fire had hardened and awakened them.

Everybody come along with me, I'll take you to a place you never did see
You should know what's really going on down below
There's a big dark town, it's a place I've found, there's a world going on underground!
Engraved on the wall is a masterfully designed image of a dwarf. The dwarf is screaming.
There was machinery too, all incomprehensible, all frozen fast by vacuum cementing.

The boy has broken apart what looks to be a heartshaped stone
And built many dungeons and domed halls of black stone, fire, and ice.
This is an extremely shitty place to die!
Bad enough having fucking flu without being crucified!
The environment is contaminated. You are already dying.

The Flagellants march around the circle.
They are never alone and their soul is always in peril,
And they ride with spears and lances like men of war.
God, forgive these bastards.

Something’s coming, something’s on it’s way.
Explosions ripple the clouds.
The exercise begins in ten seconds.
The sky will come for you once.
Just run for cover, you've got nothing left to lose!

Self-Indulgent Lore Garbage

This is in response to an old challenge of +Kiel Chenier 's that had resurfaced recently: ten pieces of setting lore that have absolutely no impact game-wise beyond flavor. I can totally do that.

1.  The hamsa is a common symbol of good fortune and warding off evil influence. It comes from the story of how Father gave up his eye for wisdom, and Mother held onto it out of love.

2. The most common written form of Manu-Babel uses the Deseret alphabet.

3. No one is permitted to possess anything of their own when entering the City Magpie - all belongings must belong to another, whether by theft or loan. This includes names, titles, and family members.

4. Angels and demons, like gods, are naturally created by humans and their actions. A laughing baby creates a legion of angels.

5. The known world is only one hemisphere: there is an entire antipode that lies beyond a burning meridian. This might be a lie promulgated by mapmakers, or a clever metaphor for a different plane.

6. The Necromantic Socialist Republics are actually quite pleasant places to visit, if you happen to like skulls. They're quite insistent on the skulls.

7. Saffron, white obsidian, red oil, and soul-pearls are all viable currencies. They are often accepted alongside the silver dollar and other coinage.

8. Old Acephavara collapsed under the strain of economic catastrophe, incestuous political corruption, and arcanonuclear war, but never seemed to get the memo that it no longer exists.

9. Troll-stones allow real-time communication across thousands of miles, though to actually accomplish that one must figure out a way to not be drowned-out by the ever-churning chaos of the Trollmoot.

10.The goblin kings went away to Parts Unknown, and the goblins eagerly await their return. Two of them are definitely Weird Al and David Bowe.

#DIY30: All the rest

There are a few prompts that I'm saving for full posts, but all of those that didn't make enough material for will be bundled together here.

11th) Why is the stone circle on the hill top broken? 

 

Archbishop Whalesh has broken the Treaty of Five Chiefs, overturning three generations of co-existence between the Church and the Five Peoples. He has given his blessing to those who would desecrate the High Places; bands of young men, converts to the church and severed from the stars have taken up the call to topple the marker stones, go out to smash the altars, to terrorize those who might sing the Music of the Spheres Cosmic.

The archbishop has likewise decreed the dissolution of all traditional marriages and outlawed the old practices – only a church marriage is official now. The astronomic arts, one practices with such care in the High Places, are likewise now criminal. 

12th) What is there to do when stationed on an interstellar lighthouse?

 

Beamrider relay stations are meant to be automated. They are places of utmost isolation – buoys in a black sea. But still, some intelligence will live there.

They will clone for themselves bodies, fork off branch versions to inhabit them. The station becomes home then to elaborate theatrical dramas, generations long. Sagas of love, loss, friendship, adventure, hate, retribution, redemption, all the things that put butts in seats. Passing ships export the recordings to wherever they might go.

Centuries pass, and the solipsistic history of a vast computer mind speaking to itself grows ever more byzantine. Eventually it will become too much, and the curtain call comes. There will be a final, brilliant moment, before the cast dies to the last, and at last there is fin.

The computer might sleep then, for a time, before starting over again. 

14th) Roll a D20 and count down that many photos on https://www.flickr.com/explore. That's your prompt.

(I used "xth random image on Wikipedia Commons" instead, rolled a 13)

A corroded metal ring, taken from the finger of a long-dead warrior. At least a thousand years old, it has no monetary value and only faint historical worth. It was a gift-ring once, a little bit of its old magic remains.

If the ring is stolen, the thief shall reliving the owner’s memories in their dreams each night – hours of bloodshed, friends hacked apart in the snow, keels splintering under grinding ice, starvation and fire and loss. If the thief is confronted with anything that might trigger these memories in their waking life, they must pass a WIS save or trigger a fight/flight/panic response.

If the ring is bestowed as a gift, it grants a blessing on its wearer – their hands shall always be warm in the snow, and their dreams shall be of mead halls and brave comrades. They cannot become exhausted through sleep deprivation.

Such was brave Hrathulf’s reward…

 

16th) Make an equipment list for a post apoc setting, using only things in 1 room of your home. Garage and kitchen are easy mode.

In the room you are able to find the following salvageable items:

• Blue backpack
• Satchel bag
• Baseball cap with neck-flap
• Ushanka
• Deck of cards and bag of dice
• Metal water bottle (21oz)
• Sandals
• Table-leg club
• Icelandic flag scarf
• Jacket
• Flask
• Bottle of antibacterial soap
• Pocket knife
• Nail clippers
• The Silmarillion

17th) What nations existed 500 years ago and how did they fall?

Sorang-Seh, pearl of the Sedsen Isles, saw the crabs migrate. Their lagoons were left as empty as their stomachs. A few of their stone structures still remain in the islands they once called home.

Ungalt, home of the greatest jade carvers in the world, vanished in an instant, under the burning ash of Mount Fotets.

Tluseí died the slow death. A bloated government that could not keep order, a populace turned upon itself by the ideologues that had wormed into places of power, a changing climate and years of famine – all took a pound of flesh, until in starvation, the nation devoured itself.

19th) What single change would you make to a popular D&D setting and why?

Forgotten Realms – Supervolcano, asteroid impact, nuked from orbit by invading aliens, etc.

I do not particularly care for the Forgotten Realms. I understand the value of having a generic base setting, but the thing about generic base settings is that development is the DMs job. Give people the tub of Legos and let them go, don’t waste time elaborating on it.

So, I propose gigantic, status-quo shattering disaster followed by enough time to allow what is rebuilt to become an entirely different setting. This would push the Forgotten Realms out of the default position, and do a lot to remedy

Planescape – Change the cosmology

I love Planescape, both as it is and as a concept. As-is, there’s not much I would change: maybe either getting rid of the Outlands and just having Sigil and the planes, or moving all the important features of all the planes onto the Outlands and sticking it all on a turtle or whale or bull and calling it a day – but both of those are rooted in the feeling that the Outlands feel a bit redundant when you have the City of Doors right there.

Conceptually, thought there is a whole lot that can be done with “Here’s the multiverse. It’s structured according to rules. There’s a city in the center.”

You can take that concept and change the rules, the planes, the city, and come up with all sorts of cool variants. A new take(s) on Planescape that embraces that sort of variability would definitely be my cup of tea.

Wilderlands of High Fantasy / City-State of the Invincible Overlord – Rebooted with DIY sensibilities.

Pretty self-explanatory, this one.

21st) Most unexpected spell that helped you get past the walls of the Fortress of See.

“It was Eoldar’s Instant Hard-Boiled Egg what got us through that wall, I swear before the gods. We’d managed to get in through the Whore’s Passage, like Brency told ya, but were stuck just outside one of the inner guard posts and me leg was falling dead asleep. Guard was right in your way and didn’t look to be moving and I hadn’t got the space to get him drowsy with a bit of pixie dust. But he was making himself some breakfast, and I made a lucky guess, and he turned around for just enough for us to rush out and bag ‘im.”

22nd) Milk Demons- besides Cecil, what are their names and what do they taste like?

It is very important to remember that milk demons are a very different thing from demon milk. The latter will not be explained here.

Demon-possessed milk tastes like rotting sugarcane and turpentine. It cannot be spit out and demands to be swallowed. The only effective means of removing milk demons is through the pasteuxorcism process, where the possessed milk is heated and then cooled in scripture-inscribed vats of cold iron.

Common milk demon names, other than Cecil, are Calcigor, Fencil, Vixnilliar, and Lencelgan.

23rd) How do gods work in your campaign? Does belief make them more powerful? Can characters become one?

There are gods, and then the gods of men.

Gods are simple: A god is an entity that is worshiped, that is powerful enough to bestow magic to those who follow it. Whether or not they are believed in or followed has no impact on their power or scope, they exist beyond humanity’s belief in them. They might be called the Old Gods

The gods of men are different, for they are created by human beings. This is not a conscious effort, but rather a sort of naturally-occurring effect: mass exerts gravitational pull, humanity creates gods. Appropriately, these gods are representative of spheres of human life and existence, and live within the tangled mess of ethics and philosophy that man finds himself in.

The gods of man can fade over time as their followers die out or the world changes around them, eventually vanishing when there is no niche left for them. They cannot die like the aforementioned gods.

It is possible to achieve apotheosis through the magic that births the gods of men (such as in the case of DOG), but it is difficult and dangerous.

24th) If the object closest to your left hand right now was a magic item in your campaign, what would it do?

Item: Black cylindrical speaker, roughly size of a grenade.

When the Black Speaker is thrown, it will produce a cacophonous screaming in an abyssal language. The noise will rarely form a coherent statement, but it is spectacularly loud and aggressive.

The effect will last for about a minute, after which point the Black Speaker will be powerless until the next dawn.

25th) The last thing you drank is a potion. What are its effects?

Dihidrogen Monoxide is a most pernicious and deadly poison – flavorless, scentless, common and deadly.  Laws passed to control the substance termed the “universal solvent” have done little to halt its spread – this is due in part to the fact that it might be made into a potion that can purge Dehyd Demons from the brain.

Yes, this toxic substance, destroyer of neighborhoods and toppler of lives, is the only known method of fortifying the brain against Dehyd Demons and purging them from the mind. The drinker finds themselves stirred from languor and in possession of an icy focus. Their eyes are opened and the illusions of the Dehyd Demons are cast aside.

Of course, Dehyd Demons aren’t real. The Authority says so. They aren’t real.

26th) Your childhood pet is now a monster. How is it going to kill me?

“Locals say it was a big cat, sir.”

“How big?”

“Big enough that it shouldn’t be here. You don’t find tigers at this latitude, sir.”

“Anything else?”

“It was gray, didn’t make any noise,  and tracked sand everywhere.”

“And carried off a prize cow with it.”

“We found the cow, sir. Just over that hill. Half the cow, at least. Lots of sand around it.”

“No sign of tracks or fur?”

“None.”

“Might as well put out a posting for those vagrants at the Yeller and Trout. Decent reward, nothing fancy.”

“Consider it done, sir.”

27th) So what's with that overly-elaborate locked box?

Within that lacquered box lie the relics of St. Ren-jain, holy hermaphrodite and martyr of the Opal Steps. The relics include:

• The fragmented skull, broken from the terrible fall.
• The obsidian dagger with which their throat was cut.
• A drop of breast milk, on which the Lost Infant was fed.
• Crumbs from the Banana Bread Miracle, where Executor Yw was led to believe.

29th) Goblins are great. Why or why not?

Goblins are the greatest, and they are the greatest because they are goblins.

Humans have a tendency to become full of themselves. To think that the universe is ordered to their desires. To think that they are masters of the world, instead of its momentary stewards. To think that everything they do is serious and important.

Goblins reject this. They are here to take the piss, to be the gadfly, to destabilize the comfortable and remind the powerful of where they stand. They are the folk of chaos: of pratfalls and fart jokes and civil disobedience.

A goblin warren is based around their queen broodmother, who is protected by her sterile daughters and sisters (jack pucks) and served by her swarms of sons and brothers. Hobs are those goblins that run the Market. The Goblin Kings have gone away, but everyone knows that one day they will return.

**

And that's the end of the little ones. It was a great deal of fun, so many thanks to +Beloch Shrike and the others who helped fill out the list.