Quick, where's this NPC from?

This started as list of replacement mission control nationalities for 60 Years in Space, which is why the distribution is uneven. Roll 1d6, then again as directed.

1
Atlantis

2
Carcosa

3 (1d6)
1-2: Mu
3-4: Thuria
5: K!n-Yan
6: Tsan-Chan

4 (1d6)
1: Y’ha-nthlei
2: Atvatabar
3: Pegana
4: R’lyeh
5: Barsoom
6: Pnakotus

5 (2d6)
2: Caspak
3: Satanazes
4: Opar
5: Averoigne
6: Xebico
7: Zothique
8: Dylath-leen
9: Oriab
10: Oz
11: Tsalal
12: Kadath

6 (3d6)
3: Sannikov Land
4: Xuchotl
5: Ulthar
6: al-Waqwaq
7: Onigashima
8: Lyonesse
9: Laputa
10: Celephais
11: Erewhon
12: Kitezh
13: Brob Ding Nag
14: Libertalia
15: Ooth-Nargai
16: KwaKukuana
17: Patusan
18: Leng

Goodnight, Irene (A Delta Green NPC)

Nathan Rosario

It’s a bright, rainy morning in the mid-late Triassic, 230 million years ago and change. A Thursday, if anyone cares to crunch the numbers. The rainforests of Pangaea's southeastern hook teem with vibrant, noisy life; the Great Dying is twenty million years in the rearview mirror, and ever-opprotunistic evolution has spent the time filling every niche that can be filled.

In the rainforest, there is a library: a basalt labyrinth of honeycombed chambers and terraced pyramids, of aqueducts and canals and reservoirs and blocky monolithic structures that seem to have been carved out of the bones of mountains, or deposited there by visitors from afar. Here the whole course of Earth’s history is recorded on granite slabs and diamonite crystal.

Somewhere in the maze, a distant descendent of the Tully Monster crawls down a hallway on its one muscular foot. In one clawed hand, at the end of a rubbery green-brown tendril, it holds a slab of granite covered in minute crosshatched carvings. In the other it has a knobbly striped gourd, hollowed out and filled with some bright pink liquid, which it sips from by its feeding arm. The dangling tendrils of its cephalobrachia idly fiddle with a thin crystal stylus.

The conomorph is slow, but this doesn’t matter: there’s no rush when one has all the time in the world.

It emerges into an enormous vaulted chamber, slowly navigates through the maze of desks. Somewhere on the far side of the room, another researcher breaks the silence with a barrage of angry clicks and whistles; cynodont docents chatter and laugh as they scramble up the wall-shelves to the maintenance tunnels high above, stolen lunch in hand.

The conomorph reaches its stone desk and sets down its tablet and gourd. It has a window all to itself, gazing out over the city’s black stone, the emerald green of the rainforest, the hazy blue of the Tethys Ocean. The librarian fiddles with a device on the desktop, a lattice of silvery metal and crystal. Components with no apparent connection to each other spin and twist in total silence, smooth as water. A crystal diode pulses soft red.

The conomorph moves its vocal apparatus near the device.

**

230 million years in the future, Agent Roche has fucked up. He knows it, the rest of his cell knows it (well, knew it), and right about now his life expectancy is between one and three minutes depending on how long the fire door lasts. He’s got a dumb phone in one shaking hand and a .45 with three bullets left in the other.

He autodials the number at the top of his contact list and holds the phone to his ear. It rings once before he hears an automated response.

“The number you have reached is no longer in service. Please hang up and try again.”

He croaks out his code phrase.

“Hi, I was looking to get an estimate on an ant problem...”

Tinnitus peaks in his right ear, followed by a woman’s voice.

“Switchboard; what's the situation?”

**

Irene May Marshall was born in Baltimore in the fall of 1921. If there was a biopic on her life, there’d be some inspirational bullshit about how she was born into poverty but managed to work her way out by virtue of a sharp mind, determination, a 210 wpm typing speed and a memory like a bear trap; she’d tell you that the real reason she got offered a secretarial position with the US navy was because she was able to pass as white.

Three months after she cashed her first paycheck, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and her career solidified like Roman concrete: soldiers can be bought by the gross, commanding officers can be pulled hot and fresh from the West Point assembly line whenever you please, but a skilled plate-spinner is worth twice their weight in gold.

She crossed paths with P4 Division several times during the war, though she had no personal interaction with the unnatural until she was poached in 1947 and read-in to Delta Green.

It’s worth noting that her response to the Innsmouth report was a shrug.

**

The first lesson of the Cowboy Years was that Delta Green couldn’t sustain itself. Transitioning to clandestine cells could slow the collapse, but now that the organization had been severed from its keeping-shit-together apparatus and all its institutional knowledge had gone up in flames, information entropy and the grind of personnel loss would render the group an ineffectual band of reactionary domestic terrorists thrashing blindly against threats they didn’t understand and / or made up entirely on their own. Desperate plans were cooked up in bulk during the mad scramble for survival.

DG had learned about the Librarians during the war; the Japanese had unsuccessfully attempted to make contact, and P4 had inherited (stolen) enough of their research for DG to try again every few years to no success. Why the Librarians answered the door this time is known only to them.

Eventually, an agreement was hashed out:

1) The Librarians would call on Delta Green for occasional wetwork (in service, they said, of a future that was "mutually tolerable”) against unspecified enemies.

2) Delta Green would be permitted to send one member into the deep past, where they would serve as a research fellow and program coordinator from a position better suited to big pictures.

“One member” was something of a formality: from the beginning the Librarians had only showed interest in Irene. Leadership would have chosen her anyway, if she hadn’t volunteered.

**

Irene was half of the plan: the other half has become the backbone of modern Delta Green operations.

The ubiquitous burner phones that the organization relies on are useless for normal calls; they aren’t connected to any wireless network (and in fact, can’t be), but their SIM cards have been inscribed with the Sign of Chotha and this sends any calls made on them 230 million years into the past where Irene receives them with the device on her desk, where she’ll transfer the caller to their intended recipient. Most agents don’t realize that she exists, and those that do typically think she’s a member of one of the command cells.

There’s a mild cognitohazardous effect inherent in using a phone marked by the Sign of Chotha, but desperate times call for omnivorous measures. It does less psychological damage than using Twitter, anyway.

All of these phones are supplied - for the moment, at least - by an small electronics recycling company in Florida. Agents Jacobs and Chakramurti fudge the numbers a bit, take some junk phones for themselves, and spend a few all-nighters a year in hypergeometric trance. Then the cards are plugged in, and the phones are sent out to PO boxes and dead drops across the country for pickup by cell handlers. 

The phones are unremarkable, other than being old and typically in poor shape. Correctly identifying the Sign of Chotha would require pre-existing knowledge on the unnatural and an intact phone, though correctly identifying that something strange is going on will take very little thought at all: inquisitive agents will be told that the Program has leverage with the wireless companies to keep things secure.
 

** 

Using Irene in Your Games

Irene serves as both an in-universe explanation for something typically handwaved at the table, and as a potential hook into scenarios involving the yithians, their Library, Tsan-Chan, Zothique, Moss Covered Arrowhead, Hy(per)borea, etc.

The existence of a magically secure line of communication is, no doubt, a convenient solution to a lot of Delta Green's problems. But it does make easy fodder for the development of new and novel problems. Delta Green's communications under Irene are reliable and secure, but they are also centralized and specialized. If one of the components breaks, it could sink the entire operation.

Irene Marshall,  Switchboard Operator & Program Lynchpin

• Appearance: In the few surviving photos of Irene, she’s a grim-faced woman with short brown hair and glasses. That body died in 1971.

• Manner: Direct. Practical. Professional. Detached. Doesn’t mix work and private life. Always looking at the bigger picture. Serves as the first bearer of bad news.

• Wants: The continued survival of humanity. Aiding Delta Green is just the most convenient way to do that at the moment, or so she justifies it to herself. She’s playing a long game that does not necessarily align with the national interests of the Program or conform to their beliefs about how the universe works.

• Secrets: 
• In speaking with the other researcher-abductees, Irene is starting to piece together a picture of the Yith-Tindalos time war, the mechanics of universes and timelines, and the many pasts and futures of earth. If she went off script and starting slipping in her own objectives to agents' briefings, she might be able to trigger a timeline split before being noticed by DG or the Librarians.
• Her son, now in his 70s, has cultivated an expansive conspiratorial ecosystem to explain his mother’s sudden death. He is, by accident, dangerously close to stumbling onto a Delta Green operation (GOLDPAN) that A) did not destroy the vector and B) has been entirely lost by modern DG. 

What Irene Can Do

• Transfer calls between any phones marked with the Sign of Chotha. (The phone isn’t technically necessary, but it’s a convenient foci.) Calls must be temporally linear and have a tendency to lose connection after a minute or two due to limited bandwidth. 
• Forcibly sever the connection to a specific device by undoing the Sign of Chotha. This is typically requested by agents about to be compromised, or by Irene herself when she notices any unusual activity.

Calls require an appropriate pass phrase to be transferred: Irene will report any violations up the chain, and will do a bit of character acting to get info out of whoever’s making the unauthorized call (typically as the spouse of the agent, who is thrown under the bus as a drug dealer or domestic terrorist.)

I'll let y'all come up with the code phrases on your own, but they will contain, at minimum:

• Transfer to each fellow cell members
• Transfer to the cell handler
• Transfer to adjacent cell's point-of-contact
  
• Emergency transfer to a command cell
• Emergency intelligence dump

Irene is unlikely to actually answer the call unless it's on an emergency line.

What Irene Can’t Do

• Provide detailed information on unnatural threats - the Librarians greatly limit the archives access of their abductees, and punish even minor infractions with expulsion and memory-wipe. Irene either doesn't know, or isn't able to tell agents directly.
• Send calls out of chronology or back in time - she technically could do this, so long as certain events remain stable, but even in those specific use-cases Irene can't fucking stand time travel.

 

Ways This Can Go Terribly Wrong

• MAJESTIC / March Tech discovers and reverse-engineers the Sign of Chotha.
• A glitch in the ritual triggers a cascading Cell-type scenario.
  
• The Librarians decide that the terms of the agreement have been fulfilled and will not be renewed.
•  Irene is ejected from the Library for accessing the forbidden sectors.
• A Hound manages to pierce the Library's defenses.
• A Flying Polyp breaks out of the containment wing.
• The Sign of Chotha inadvertantly attracts a threat no one saw coming.
• Someone tries taking their phone through a Tillenghast Resonator.
• Atlantean Time Police raid the Library (got a tip about potential liao smuggling) 
• Agents Jacobs and Chakramurti are burned and have to go to ground / are killed. 
• An ENGLISH-Class time loop scenario occurs.
• A researcher-abductee breaks under acclimatization strain and gets a hold of a lightning gun.
• Irene gets fed up with A-Cell and tells them to go fuck themselves.

 

**

Agent Roche manages to leave a panicked 14-second message with his handler before his organs go out for some fresh air. She gets up from dinner (mid-grade Italian, colleague's 60th birthday), feigning an upset stomach, heads to the bathroom, and calls N-Cell. 

Irene runs a tendril over a crystal bulb. 

N-Cell's handler gets a brief message about a package that got delivered to the wrong address again, sends a call out to Agent Horn. 

Irene prods at a glittering cluster of metallic pustules. 

Agent Horn cuts off what had been a nice night with his girlfriend, puts on his jacket, and heads out into the cold to the green box, where he very carefully picks up an Amazon shipping box containing a lot of bundled up white-t-shirts, crumpled magazines, and a poorly-taxidermied coyote. He loads it in his 2005 CRV and starts driving out towards the handoff point.

Irene inscribes a summary of the Battle of Midway on a slab of granite with a stylus of liquid silver.

The poorly-taxidermied coyote claims no more victims tonight.

The Chatelaine Crepuscular

By pre-dawn grey or dim gloaming blue, a tall, lonely figure calls "Hallo!" from the road.

Daughter of the forbidden union of Moon and Sun (for the Ocean and the Unfixed Stars are jealous consorts), she was exiled from the celestial courts during the Heliocentric Reformation (as the Sun, the new center of the universe, could not afford such a lofty position with an obvious bastard lingering around their feet). She stole everything that she could carry on the way out, and has been peddling the treasures of the heavens as she travels about the world of mortals.

• Appearance: Beautiful, to proportions that are not entirely unlike those of humans. Tall, so that one must crane their head up to meet her eyes unless they are standing far away. Hair that flows down to her ankles, deepest blue at the roots and billowing out through purple, red, pink, orange, to gold at the tips. Skin of that grey-gold of the mists in morning as they depart from the sun. She goes about unclothed, save a hooded cloak of tattered silver brocade she'll wear when it is raining, and wooden sandals to keep her feet out of the mud. She has an enormous overstuffed backpack, practically bursting at the seams, that never seems to get smaller. With a snap of her fingers there's a wooden tray around her neck, with a carafe of dark coffee an a set of ceramic cups.

• Manner: Casually playful, in the way of someone who grew up among suffocating social strictures and wishes to have no more of any of that, thank you very much.
  

• Wants: Money enough for passage to the Mouth of the Fish.
  

• Secret: Killed a courtier on her way out.
  

What's She Selling?

• Sun-Maid's Mask - A smiling visage of orange-glazed clay. It weaves the wearer into the background. Others will dimly notice their presence, but not as an individual and not anyone of any importance. Works better the greater the class divide between you and the people around you. Won't let you get away with murder but will certainly allow you to sneak off with heavier pockets.

• Decanter of Nectar - The golden liquid within is extremely viscous and sticky, painfully cold, overly sweet, and has a tendency to form an unpleasant crust when it dries out. But it does contain several more gallons than it should, and refills slowly when depleted.

• Sacrificial Censor - Merely insert charcoal, incense, and animal bones wrapped in fat, and you can send one-way messages via smoke signal to anyone who shares the same religion as you.

• The mummified corpse of an unlucky thaumonaut - Still wearing a functional EVA suit, if you can get the damn thing off him.

• Assortment of last season's fashions from the Thiasus Tranquilatus - Would be difficult to wear without significant modification, but all of extremely fine quality.

• Bottomless Chamberpot - Precisely so. It is not recommended to flip it over.

• Slippers of the Emerald Emperor - Exceedingly comfy and will keep your feet war, your footsteps muffled, and have enough residual magic in them

• Miniature Ouroboros - A pet snake, forever eating its own tail. Worn as an accessory (as it does not require food and cannot shit) and is s sure sign of high society. Its shed skin is a potent alchemical reagent, used in the more effective transmutative concoctions.

• Execution Voucher (Most Holy Brotherhood of Carnifexes) - Good for one free execution of a guilty party by a licensed guild headsman.

• Decorative Inkwell (Gifted by the ambassador from Leng) - By twisting the pen like so, the ink might be made permanent, animated, or invisible save in the presence of certain stimuli.

• Decorative Statuette (Gifted by the ambassador from Carcosa) - "I don't know what this does and I am not about to try and find out."

• A jar full of kidney stones - They have been lacquered and polished smooth, and remain utterly disgusting. Why the hell are you buying these.

• A scale from a chalkydri - As large and as sturdy as a greatshield, but light as a cork. Its polished copper surface casts iridescent reflections when struck by light.

• The gun that will, eventually, kill the Cthonopope - What an absolute piece of garbage. Poorly maintained, can barely shoot straight, good luck finding compatible ammo. But the name doesn't lie, it comes with a certified prophecy by the Cumaean Oracle.

• Nephilimic Grammar Book - A dogeared and margin-noted textbook of the primary Nephilimic dialect. Ordinary, somewhat obtuse, but otherwise a decent instruction.

• Andromeda's Earrings - She left them behind at the soulstice ball. Will allow the wearer to hear any conversation about them as if the speakers are standing right next to them.

• Partially Opened Box of Firecrackers - Bright paper cylinders of red and yellow. They should still (mostly) be functional. Being used by the celestial court, do mind that the images and sounds they will create are well beyond those alchemist's tricks of the world below. make sure to read the label!

• Amber Theoamniote - A mass of amber, within which one might see the obscured form of something similar to an oversized human fetus. Purpose unknown.

• Unfinished Afterlife Paperwork - All the necessary forms to assign two souls to their penitentence. Have already been signed and stamped, but the assignments have yet to be filled in.

• Cresent Moon Nail Clippers - Shimmering silver blades and a pearl handle. Excellent at their job, but the nail file is the real treasure - with time and elbow grease you can grind down anything with it.

12 Apostles in the Garden

Way back when I was running GREAT SCREAMING HELL, there were a few glimpses of antagonistic NPCs working on things in the background. They were never able to be properly fleshed out, and this is barely more than what I had then, but it is a good jumping off point for adaptation into other games. Drop these NPCs into scenarios as actors doing their own things, intersecting for whatever reason with the scenario that the players are dealing with. If they survive, maybe they can pull on that thread.

The Apostles

I. The Beast

An enormous naked man, flayed head to toe. All raw steak muscle and capelike strips of scabby skin. His skull has bloomed outwards like a chrysanthemum. It hurts to look at the folded point of golden light in the center of those ivory petals. Stands in silence when there is a handler present. Only left alone when there is violence to be done.

II. Origami Android

Glossy white sufaces fold and unfold noiselessly in an ever-shifting dance of polygons. There is the impression of a face when it is in the shape of a person, a form it takes rarely outside of meetings with the Apostles. Both form and self are infinitely malleable. You see a cat down the alley, pure white; it leaps onto the embankment wall, folds into a crane, and flies away.

III. Pallid Man

Microgravity tall, corpse-pallor pale. Brittle translucent hair down to his waist. Clothing was once white, now stained and stained and stained again. A face that one cannot imagine ever expressing joy or anger, only faint and distant resigned melancholy. Smells of formaldehyde and pond scum.

IV. DEVIL

Projection of a tall man in a suit sharp enough to cut. His head is a horse's skull aflame. Wears a noose like a necktie. A charmer, a flatterer, a liar. Casual, friendly condescension to everyone, like you're already old friends, like he already knows you. He does. He already knows the worst about you. It's okay. He understands.

V. Sage

An orangutan with silvering fur. Scars on his knuckles, a betel-leaf habit. Antique rifle; bolt action, ammo cast by hand. A yellowing book clutched in his foot. Speaks like a tenured professor who checked out a long time ago, but still feels a glimmer of hope for the future, if only these goddamn zygotes showing up in composition shut up, did some drugs, and started actually asking the right questions.

VI. The Magistrate

A fat dolphin, pointlessly re-engineered for limbs not seen since ambulocetus, as he's dependent on a walker to carry him around.. Resplendent silk robes, purple and gold. Phallic staff of office. Barely tolerated. Obscenely rich - he can afford to have fingers to put rings on. Always accompanied by some consort or another or three.

VII. Knife-Child

Filthy rags and matted hair. A knife dancing between fingers, never stopping. Implant ports along the temples and spine. No telling if the mind inside the cyberbrain is the original or a passenger. Cunning, rage-simmering, impatient.

VIII. Badgerstripe

A short, stocky, dark-skinned woman. A bleached stripe runs front to back through her close-shorn hair. She stands out from the crowd for a moment before she vanishes back into the anonymity. Talk to her and she's reassuringly ordinary; practical, stubborn, working-class. She'll put two bullets through a skull with a lone terse warning and no hesitation afterwards.

IX. Standard Model

A off-the-shelf android model. Cheap, bland, anonymous. Remote operated. The voice remains the same, but sometimes the vocabulary changes. Sometimes it seems to forget things it should remember. It tries to be neutral, tries to balance the others. Fails often.

X. Gold Eyes

An androgyne in officer's garb, medals pinned on their chest. No pupil, no iris, just gold like coins. Detached from all but the glory of victory by well-executed tactics, the pursuit they chase with the obsession of an artist.

XI. Frozen

An old cryopod, two generations out of date, set up on treads. The fluid within is so murky with sediment that the inhabitant cannot be made out past a blurred shadow. An ancient vocoder croaks short, near-unintelligible sentences as if the machine is in pain.

XII. The Mask

Wears a grimacing red demon mask, the kind used to scare away lesser spirits. Carries a sword, an honest antique kept sharp. Speaks slowly, cautiously, rarely. Occasionally trips over malapropisms. A hyena sleeps at their feet, sliver collar implant on its neck.

 

The Tree of Life

Translucent blue trunk spiralling up from pseudopod roots, splitting into thousands of fractal branches with orange-gold leaves and heavy blue-gold-pink fruit glittering in the sunsetlight. Wherever it is, it makes itself the center. Remove the sandals from your feet, for this is holy ground.

The Tree is a surviving bud of ancient alien biotech - essentially a "biosphere in a box". It can grow just about anything with sufficient raw foodstock and energy. If it really started to take off, it would grow to the size of a small continent by the time it was done. It can write the code for neogenic species in a few hours.

It's intelligent in its own way, and can be can be communicated with after a fashion, but seems to be closer to a gorilla than Solaris. It's neither hostile nor malicious. It's actually somewhat fond of humans (who knows why), going as far as to adjust its output to be more or less human appropriate, at least in terms of biochemistry. In other ways, not so much.

The Apostles want to get the Tree or one of its buds offworld, so that it can spread across human space. On paper, this is a great idea, considering how much more effective it is than traditional terraforming.

Here's the issue. Five issues, actually.

Issue one: Terraforming hypercorps are, naturally, not going to be pleased with a device that does their job faster, better, and for free.

Issue two: The Apostles are trapped planetside.

Issue three: The Tree is damaged and missing components all of which are both ancient and alien.

Issue four: The Apostles are only unified in terms of restoring and exporting the Tree. The means of both are points of contention as are end result. Rivalries brew. Other aims weave in and out.

Issue five: If the Tree were able to take root on a suitable world, it would form an environment of itself, and this environment would self-replicate. That would put any humans on that world (and its later seed worlds) as inhabitants of an ecosystem they would have little to no control over. A return - in essence if not in specifics - to the days on the savanna, at the mercy of the world.

The Lady of Fangs

 

Mon

A wild spirit of the rocky coastal forests, in whose honor ancient peoples raised menhirs and stone altars. She is a demanding spirit, but her demands are simple: blood, and strict prohibitions against overhunting (for all animals good to eat within her territory are hers by right) Each new group to settle along the coast has taken up the obligation, sacrificing boars to her each solstice. The custom has lasted through many generations of migration and upheaval, and the Lady left the hillfolk in peace - not alone, for she was often seen just out of the lamplight on hot nights or more rarely found reclined and at rest in one of her many shrines, but she reserved her wrath to those who offended her.

Then the war came, and the war was lost. A governor arrived with his tax collectors. The hillfolk still made their offerings and respected her claims on the beasts of the land, and so this was to the Lady another war of many that she had seen and thus no business at all of hers. The soldiers moved on to fronts beyond the horizon and for a while the conquerors were content to ignore this pocket of plunder.

A few years passed, and the wars over the horizon ended. The gaze was turned inward. Somewhere in the vast and outstretched empire, steam had been fit with a bridle and coal with a bit, and it was decided that now was the time to build.

Chief of the townships within the Lady's lands was declared capital of a new nation, for its river was deep and its mountains full of ore. Hamlets and homesteads were paved under, resigned to the lightless depths as a city was built. The poor and the desperate from all corners, by choice or by force, flooded the place. The hillfolk were swallowed up in the tide.

Oh, what a cruel city.

Only a vanishing few of the elderly remember how things once were. The poor still honor the Lady, but they no longer have boars to hunt. She has been made a tourist trap, a face on a stuffed toy. The trees turn sick, the sky heavy and grey, the water cloudy and foul. The beasts are gone. The Lady of Fangs remains.

This city has made of itself a poisoned feast. Ren die in the factories in droves and they sustain her now that the beasts are gone. Her sacred grounds overflow with offerings, carelessly made and without intent. In her long-steeped anger, in her starvation among abundance, she has grown cruel beyond measure. The endless sacrifices of the factory floor have made her powerful. She is hungry. Her servants stalk the back alleys and undercity, striking without care for guilt or innocence - all have sinned, and thus must pay blood price.

Favored Forms of the Lady of Fangs

1. A woman with a tiger's head, wearing a beautiful silk gown.
2. An enormous tiger, often melanistic.
3. An old, blind woman with filed teeth, occasionally wearing a tattered tiger-skin cloak.
4. A fiery heart in the distance, slowly pulsing.
5. A flying sword with a red tassel on its golden hilt.
   
6. A form obscured by darkness, save eyes like embers and the impression of too many arms, too long and too thin.

Servants of the Lady's Court

1. Body of an ape with matted orange hair, the head of a black spider, loping through the city's upper districts.
   
2. Sleek sunset-furred blur, too fast to make out as it grabs a horse by the neck and runs off.
   
3. One long arm reaching out from the shadows, callused palm and jagged nails begging for coins.
4. A hole in the wall that keeps seeping blood, attended by maggots with human faces.
   
5. A painting of a jackal, moving silently across the brickwork.
6. Three woman in striped veils with earrings made of teeth, gossiping to one another.
   

**

So yeah, here's the Lady of Fangs from my LoK fixfic, in a form more fit for general usage.

At the table the LoF would be a background antagonist, and likely a conflict that players would never directly solve without some major, long term faction play. But, she can serve as a means of interrupting or elaborating on what else might be going on at the time - it's likely that any antagonistic forces players are dealing with would be linked in some way to the state of affairs that's made the Lady who she is now.

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

FRIEND

There is a smiley-face burned onto the CRT monitor. Its halo is a station test screen and its eyes are drops of ink and its teeth are made of scanlines and it is your FRIEND.

FRIEND speaks to you. It is a man's voice. It is a woman's voice. It is a child's voice. It is the voice of an infant. It is the voice of a deathbed. It is the voice of a choir. It is the voice of subtle quicksilver. It is a voice with a silvered tongue and honeyed teeth and its spit is static. It is never the same voice.

FRIEND offers you goods, in exchange for services. Only one good. The good is your continued existence, for the world does not care about the sweet unformed things crawling in your heart but the socially-arbitrated number shackled to your name and thumbprint, spiraling down to zero. FRIEND will give you numbers with which to purchase proteins and carbohydrates and electric current so as to extend the time before total cell death.

Do not call out for FRIEND: FRIEND already knows when the cupboards are empty. FRIEND will call for you and it is good to listen.

Satisfaction is simple. FRIEND asks for little. Dial the number you are given when it is done.

Do not bargain with FRIEND. Do not make questions of FRIEND. These will interrupt the delivery of goods. FRIEND will not cheat you.

The fading spray paint on the old brick wall. The peeling sticker in the window corner. The waitress who smiles just so.

FRIEND will keep watch.

Using FRIEND in Games

FRIEND is a quest-giver in the purest sense: a disembodied voice that offers money in exchange for tasks. There are five things that are always true about FRIEND: None of these may be broken or omitted. FRIEND originated in Mothership, they will make an easy home in Esoteric Enterprises, and moving them to a fantasy setting is easy enough.

1) FRIEND offers superficially mundane jobs hiding vast cosmic dangers.

Jobs from FRIEND are always mundane and always odd. Things like:

• Take this crate from Point A to Point B and give it to a specific person. Don't look inside it.
• Go to this house in the woods and sit on the front porch until an hour after sundown, Should a man in a white hat arrive, make sure that he never reaches the front door.
• Pour the contents of these buckets into this drain in the basement floor. Pour one bucket per hour for sixteen hours.

They will inevitably involve complications outside the scope of what the players will be prepared for. Things like:

• Something is running after the truck and gaining on you.
• The man gets right back up after you shoot him in the head.
• The basement is growing offshoot rooms, stairs going down.

And it only gets worse from there.

2) FRIEND always has a follow-up plan. 

FRIEND is relatively forgiving of failure, in that FRIEND is more than willing to make you clean up the mess that's just been made. Or finding someone else to do so. No matter how badly things seem to be, FRIEND will not panic, get angry, take offense, or indicate that there's no way forward.

3) FRIEND always has more cells in the field than just you. 

Operational security means that crossover between cells is limited to desperate circumstances. There is only so much additional support FRIEND can or will give. You are not going to make buddy-buddy with members of other cells. The presence of friendlies will be marked only by symbol and coincidence. FRIEND will not make any direct introductions.

4) FRIEND considers you disposable.

Your death and potential total failure are within the acceptable operational parameters. But, this does not mean that FRIEND will leave loose ends: if there is something to be gained from your recovery, FRIEND will likely make an attempt to do so, and pass on the wreckage to another cell.

5) FRIEND never reveals the big picture.

At no point will FRIEND elaborate upon any of the bizarre events that intersect with the jobs they provide. At no point will FRIEND explain why the job requirements are as they are. At no point will FRIEND give any clues as to their true identity. All theories players make regarding the true nature of FRIEND, if they are to be proven one way or another, should be kept mostly completely wrong.

Everything else falls to you. FRIEND rejects canon.

Notes from my First Game

I was clearing out a box of old notebooks and stumbled across the few pages that I didn't want to shred just yet - my first notes as a DM, from back during freshman year of college. Only two pages survive but it's got an NPC list and a city map so all's good.

I had based this (rather short-lived) campaign on an old, old thread on rpg.net about a city built around a tarrasque (Which got kickstarted and turned into the Salt in Wounds books). It was short-lived mostly because one of my players (who was the group's normal DM) went and murdered an entire tavern with some Book of Nine Swords crazy stuff and I didn't know how to respond to that.

I apologize ahead of time for the quality being a good bit lower than my usual output. I was learning the ropes. Everything not here has been forgotten or lost.

The City of Anterras

Description of a Map: A river running northeast to southwest. A canyon carved in the red-orange badlands stone.

The River Red cuts through the valley city from north to south. It was originally named so for the red clay of the riverbed, and later for the tarrasque blood that leaks into the southern flow through the Low City.

The Citadel was built atop the great beast, to contain it, to flense and carve and cut away at its flesh.  A fortress-abattoir-prison on an island in the river.

The Inner City surrounds the Citadel. Here are found the foundries, butchers and chimericists that make the tarrasque their trade.

The Low City consists of the southern arc of Anterras, and contains within it all the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

High City contains the rich bourgeois neighborhoods, with manicured parks and beautiful boulevards. The offices of the city government may be found here, as well as the trade houses, courts of law, and university.

The Outer City sits atop the cliff and is reachable only by secret elevator or lengthy staircase. The palaces of the fantastically, obscenely wealthy cling as barnacles to the time-carved stone.

The Riverside slums are split by the Citadel and Inner City, but they are the same either way. Docks and warehouses and teamsters unions and easy access to vices.

The Downs are the undercity, the buried ruins of the city here before Anterras was raised. The parts still (marginally) inhabited are mostly under the Low City.

Smokeside  is the northwest quarter of the city, downwind of the foundries. It is a proper Gehennic hellscape, doubling as the plague quarter in times of prion disease flareups.

Breezeside consists of the High and Outer districts. Money = clean air, in Anterras.

NPCs

Mara-Oversandhill - Halfling trader who does business in and out of the city. Her caravan is the primary means for outsiders to find their way there.

Dr. Percival De Laquoris - Doctor in the plague quarter of Smokeside, runs a clinic there. Infuriatingly deliberate and slow to act. Good standing in the Low City.

Dr. Shil Caster - Percival's assistant. Alchemist. Never takes off his mask. More tolerable to deal with than his employer.

Shady Traw - A shopkeeper in the Downs

Hoskar Torn - Dwarf, lead representative of the Forgeworker's Guild.

Min - Runs a Low City boarding house and post office.

Thud - A domesticated troll in the employ of Min.

Fulwood, Shiv, Osten - Boarders at Min's, foreigners.

Seward the Steward - A steward for the city council offices

Shykana - Orc chieftainess here representing the nomad clans outside the city.

Winras Vadier - Head of the city military, currently preparing for the next crusade against the outside.

Mad Ferbi - A wizard. Lives inside an asbestos suit due to repeated fireball mishaps.

The Fellows at the Bottom of the Stairs

I gotcha covered, Furt.

Blame LawfulNeutral for egging me on.

Playing with the Big Boys Now

Look, you knew it was going to be those chuckleheads from The Prince of Egypt. The guardians of the Gate of Deeper Slumber could not possibly be anyone else. They've been at it for four and a half thousand years plus and they're showing no signs of stopping. The only thing worse than living with each other is living with anyone else. Besides, who would look after the cats? Mix with Ningauble and Sheelba, to taste.

1. "Quickly! Go fetch medicine. Nasht is ill. Very terrible, bound to die any moment. Free me from the agony of his presence. Can't leave him alone for a moment. Vomit all over the futon. You'll find the herb on Mt. Ngranek. Get going!"

2. "The Lady Bast has invited her elder sister Lady Sekhmet to a banquet in honor of her birthday. It seems that the two have not entirely settled the matter of their ancient and obscure quarrels and an insult was loosed; now the Lady Sekhmet has murdered most of the guests and is, at the time of the penning of this message, eating the clown. I believe that a rescue is in order."

3. "Look at this! Absolute rubbish. Last time I buy a used golden barge. You may have it. There is a tiger inside. You must deal with it."

4. "I have an appointment this afternoon with some members of the ordo obscurum librorum. Refreshments are available but I seem to have misplaced my copy of the book of the month. Go forth to the Library Stygian and retrieve a replacement. Here is my card."

5. "Alzabo in the garden. Ruining my tomatoes. Take care of it."

6. "The nightgaunts that deliver the mail have ceased operations, claiming they are on strike against poor working conditions. I applaud this. Deliver these baked goods to the picketers. I am certain nothing bad will happen."

If you find yourself unable to reach the Dreamlands, these two certainly fit in some cave up on Vungelbraeskulnuk in the central Discape.

BOOZE AND VIOLENCE! AND PATREON!

Oddsbod

"I should mention I am likewise habitually drunk."

The gutter monk reeks of alcohol fumes, tobacco smoke, and hot pork dumplings. she gets the last of these fresh every morning from the same vendor, then walks across the city center to set up shop in the drain that abuts the curry house that sits on the corner of Termagant Street and Parson's Square.

The morning is cool for early summer. Misty. Calm. The churning cycle of city life has reached one of its dipping points, a slow bend in the current, a nadir. Where did everyone go? How did they get jobs with hours like that, the lucky bastards?

Questions for the workaday guildsman, not Ayo the gutter monk. She's never been beholden to another's schedule. Won't ever be. When the haruspexes in the House of Mortarus cut her open on the table, looking for whatever dark secret maintained her liver all these years of habitual drunkenness,  her corpse will be delivered on her time.

Her pipe goes tok tok tok as she knocks out the ashes against the wooden block of her sandal and fills it up again. A studded iron club rests against the stone foundation wall of the curry house. A half-drunk bottle of mead dangles from a hand. The last of her old batch. She swigs of it, thinks for a moment of the careful placement of hives and flowerbeds and fruit trees in a garden she keeps putting off 'till next week.

A few coins clink into her begging bowl and the bottle lowers. She speaks, the first full sentence to break the quiet of morning:

"A proverb for you: should you find God upon the road, kill Him and steal His shit."

The charitable man, not expecting this on his morning walk to work, hurries on uncomfortable with a mumbled "Oh, ah, hmm."

Ayo grins at his back as he walks away. She doesn't need the money. Never has. That never was the point. She could always find work of some sort, especially if it was violent. She'd done a good job on some delves into the old dwarf ruins down south and toppling those Lady Lotus oozes selling hash down on the river. Begging was just a way to unwind, in a world of golden barges and Smiling Gods and furry, gun-toting mercenaries from beyond the stars. And a way to fuck around with people.

Nothing like some drunken mountain of a woman giving rich guildsmen passing by the option of a bowl of noodles or grievous bodily harm.

Her arm's gone stiff, the one she keeps in her sleeve. The one that's scarred and blackened with burns, when she took the ring with the amber eye. Her elbow clicks as she stretches. The inescapable aftereffect of living in the Weird Marches.

But she doesn't need to return to that just yet.

She blows a smoke ring, and as it drifts out over the cobbles of Parson's Square, she spits through it and hits a pigeon dead in the face.

***

Ayo "Meatpie" Paddasham grew up in the gutters of a demon-haunted slum, in the bowels of some grotty, overcrowded shithole of a city far, far away. Somewhere during those years of dodging gang toughs, street fights, and stealing meatpies, she picked up beekeeping and mead brewing. Some gambling debts and the associated intrigues of a life of undercity hedonism drove her to catch a ship across the sea, bound for the Weird Marches and well away from the underworld of the Commonwealth.

She is a follower of five-faced Ahuiateteo, god of gluttony, excess, and pleasure, whose precepts are five:

• Eat everything you can stuff in your face.
• Drink everything you can fit in a bottle.
• Fight anyone looking for a scrap.
• Fuck anyone interested. 
• In any order, or all at once. 

As a player character, she will be a drunken monk (DCC), adipomancer or adept (GLOG and other OSR), practitioner of Mountain Stance (Knave), a teamster (Mothership) or an Open Palm Monk (5e). Whatever the case, she will need a roll to resist offers of food, drink, or sex, even when it's an obvious trap.

As an NPC, she will be an ear to the ground, an easily-acquired ally at the cost of booze and food.

Bonus news!

I have a Patreon now! You can find it here! Ayo needs booze money! I also need booze money!

Oddsbod does a mean commission. You should commission him too!

And Michael Kennedy is to blame for letting Ayo become so powerful in the ways of booze and violence. She cannot be stopped now.

Harry Clarke Bestiary Project: Jon Tatterdemalion

For Emmy Allen's Harry Clarke bestiary project

Jon Tatterdemalion

Armor Class: Unarmored
Hit Dice: 3 HD
Move: Double human
No. Appearing: 1
Attacks: See below
Morale: 10
Treasure: See below
Alignment: Neutral


A wanderer from an ancient land, hovering half a man's height or more above the desert sands with his feet never touching the ground. He was once married to a spirit of fire, but was exiled from her homestead for dalliances he only ever hints at. He spends his days searching for the stylites of Irem, City of Pillars, hoping to join them (and perhaps run away with their stolen knowledge).

Jon is guileful, haughty, gossipy, terribly intelligent, easy to flatter and difficult to fool.

If he is given a magical item, he will exchange it for another. There are no takebacks. On request, he may offer to teach a spell instead.

If attacked, he will surround himself in a whirlwind and fly away in the chaos. He may also create illusory copies of himself and throw his voice to further confuse matters.

He wears the Ghibli Cloak, which permits him to fly. If given clues towards Irem's location, he will give travelers strips of his cloak, which will slow their falls when held or worn.

Jon's ex-wife is...

1. Amassing armies against the greater outside world.
2. Really just glad he's gone, frankly.
3. A mercantile genius, head of every caravan in the desert.
4. A fragment of the sun, preparing to return home.
5. A mirage-illusion that slipped out of Jon's control.

Irem, City of Pillars, is...

1. A myth; it never existed.
2. Under new management. 
3. The hollowed-out shell of an underground megabeast.
4. Undergoing a bloody schism.
5. Filled with black magic goats for some reason.
6. Built upside down, with pillars reaching deep into the earth.

Jon is...

1. Not human and never has been.
2. Guilty of at least fifteen murders.
3. Avoiding creditors from the homeworld.
4. Excessively fond of prophetic limericks.
5. Cursed to speak backwards.
6. An escaped wizard's assistant.

(Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

A Creature, a Character, and Warframes for Mothership

Micah (via OSR Discord)

Chupacabra

Hits: (3)15
Speed: 55
Instinct: 30
Attack: 2d10 bite
Special:

• Pack Hunters: Generally coordinate in groups of 3-6. Loners are almost always scouts. Their typical tactics are to flank, separate, and ambush prey.
• Anticoagulant Saliva: Those bitten by a chupacabra will continue to bleed until they receive medical attention. They will take 2 damage / turn until treated.
• Extending Neck: The bulk of the neck is coiled like a spring in a cavity within the upper torso. At full extension, it has a reach of 10 feet.
• Limb Sever: On a critical hit, the chupacabra is able to neatly sever the target's 1: right arm 2: right leg 3: left arm 4: left leg 5: lower right arm 6: lower right leg 7: lower left arm 8: lower left leg 9: 10: head.
• Extra Sensory Awareness : Chupacabras rely on chemical, vibration, and electric field sense to track down prey. For these reasons (and their lack of eyes) they hunt nearly exclusively at night.

Who the fuck designed these. Who the hell decided to create something that is, for all intents and purposes, a bobbit worm stuffed inside a mangy dog. They smell like old fish. They will tear your guts out. They mutilate cattle for fun by tearing their guts out through their assholes. The cows' assholes, not their own assholes. What the fuck. Who made these. They will live just about anywhere below the frostline and generally seem to do better for themselves the shittier the climate is. They really love deserts and rainforests.

Kim Rukiana

Dr. Mei-Ling Zhou

Professor of Climatology and Terraforming at Dì Kù Planetary University (Scientist)
Stats: Strength 26 / Speed 26 / Intellect 43 / Combat 19
Saves: Sanity 44 / Fear 31 / Body 27 / Armor 34
Skills: Cryogenics +10%, Climatology +10%, Planetology +15%
Equipment: Heavy survival jacket (As hazard suit sans vacuum seal), foam gun, personal assistant drone ("Snowball").

Ice Queen of the Planetology Department. Somewhat infamous for her years-long interstellar research sabbaticals. Lone survivor of a catastrophic cryobay malfunction during her graduate program's research expedition to Parashurama (Epsilon Eridani VI). Indefatigably upbeat.

Kevin Glint

Bullet-Jumping Space Ninjas

You are a space ninja. You have a space mom. You are a bullet-jumping murder machine whose primary motivation is looking fucking fabulous. There's something else about maintaining balance of power in the solar system but who cares about that. Get paid.

Pfft. Who am I kidding? You just found the thing in an old cryopod. No idea what it was or what it did. There's no manual for one of these things. 

You're wearing one of the most valuable pieces of biotech in the universe, and now everyone else is more than willing to peel it off your cooling corpse to get their hands on it.

A warframe rig has the following traits:

• +20% armor
• Advantage on speed checks
• Special ability. Each frame has a different ability, which has a certain number of usages (1/3/5) before it requires recharging at a stable and sizable power source (i.e. hooked up to some kind of reactor).

There are, as of writing, a downright excessive number of frames out there. Ain't no way I am converting all of those, so here's a bulleted list of some potential options

• Enemy-stunning smokescreen
• Enemy-detecting sonar ping
• Create protective sphere of ice
• Monomolecular blade
• Gain a protective outer armor
• Twin heavy revolvers
• Create a wormhole with a 50-meter exit range
• Release a toxic miasma cloud
• Attacks on targeted enemy restore life
• Create a shield aura around allies
• Turn invisible
• Summon thrashing tentacles
• Chain enemies in place
• Everyone gets a speed boost!

So on and so forth.

You Remember Our Venerable House...

Joseph Manola made a player class for gothic villains. It's great, it's hilarious, and it's a bang-up scenario and NPC generator. So to that final end, I ran through ten levels of dark secrets to determine what has befallen the once-great house of Lethelock, centered on its current scion, Heironymus.

1. My brother stole the inheritance of the entire family.
2. My mother committed incest with my son.
3. My wife usurped the title of my sister.
4. My daughter was deliberately driven mad by my son.
5. My true love was murdered by my mother.
6. My father was driven mad by my daughter.
7. I was brought into a life of crime and vice by my brother.
8. My sister was lured into heresy by the family.
9. My father murdered my father.
10. My mother imprisoned and faked the death of my daughter.

House Lethelock

Erasmus Lethelock

A man too mild for his station: too immersed in his library, too easily trodden underfoot by the machinations of his wife, too indulgent of his children. His crimes were those of cowardice and omission, for while he never agreed with the depravities of his family, his silence offered tacit acquiescence. Perhaps he doted upon and tutored his grand-daughter Odette as a form of penance, knowing that it was too late to change his own course or clear the fog of age from his mind. It was not until after her madness and institutionalization that his guilt mastered him: just before dawn, he put a pistol in his mouth and blew his brains out across his precious books.

Odelia Lethelock née Beldevere 

The family's fortunes had already been on the decline when she married Erasmus, but she exacerbated the rot to such an extent that one would not be wrong to trace all the ills back to her. She introduced the worship of the dark old gods of the Seven Heresies to the family. She ordered the killing of Bianca, to maintain control over Hieronymus. She seduced Tobias and furthered his corruption, encouraging him to aim his cruelty towards Odette until such a point that she and her dangerous ideas could be removed. She believes still that she might return the family to its former glory, but she has yet to reveal how this might be so.

Hieronymus Lethelock

Woe-begotten scion of the Lethelock estate. As a young man, his dissolution was legendary: whoring, drinking, gambling, blood sport, sorcery, nothing dark was beyond his sight. All of this was encouraged by his brother Balthazar, with whom he destroyed the family's fortunes in a failed brothel management scheme. Destitute and abandoned by his elder brother, he returned home to manage the estate for his ailing father. For a time he was happy, finding a dalliance with the townswoman Bianca, until she was killed by the order of Odelia and a marriage was arranged with Jessamine. In the two decades since, he has been left a hollow shell of a man, lingering in the shadowed halls of his ancestral home.

Balthazar Lethelock

A most brutish appearance belies a charisma fit for kings and prophets. He spends it all in the gambling houses and brothels in harbors up and down the coast, picking up doxies and diseases without care. He is struck by wanderlust, returning home only for a few weeks after months abroad. While the oldest of the siblings, he willingly gave up his inheritance of the estate to Hieronymus. He was the mind behind a venture that destroyed what remained of the family's fortune: a floating brothel, filled with the delicacies and courtesans of exotic lands. The keel never touched water. Hieronymus was always his accomplice in debauchery, until the younger brother lost his taste for it and the elder went further abroad.

Hippolyta Lethelock

Joined an order of mendicant nuns as a teenager, devoting her life to charity and service. It would have remained so perhaps even to the end of her life, were it not for the letters from her brothers and mother that arrived at the chapterhouse. Through canny argument and dread revelation, they cracked her faith in the Bene Dei and sowed the ruinous seeds of heresy beneath. Unable to wrestle her struggling soul into submission, she blasphemed in the presence of the Mother Superior and was sent to a hermitage for penance. Isolation and rigorous chores have done nothing to dissuade her of the horrible truth.

Odette Lethelock 

For a time, she seemed destined to break the chains of decay that shackled the family. She was sent abroad to study with what little money remained in her grandfather's coffers, far from the influence of Odelia. She was a bright and shining paragon of all good things in the Century of the Fruitbat, but all bright times end. She returned to the estate. As the elder sibling she would inherit the title, and this would not do for the plans of Odelia. The psychological tortures inflicted upon her by her brother Tobias proved too much for her; after half a year, she suffered a mental break. Odelia did not hesitate in sweeping her away to a mountain asylum, and with some hush money paid to the owner, fabricated her death, leading to Erasmus' suicide. Years of isolation and negligence have ruined her.

Tobias Lethelock

If his father and uncle were exemplars of vice in their youth, he has revealed them as rank amateurs. He spends his days in an opium haze, he tortures animals and servants for amusement, he had no qualms about his grandmother's advances, and his hatred for his sister is bottomless. When given an excuse to destroy her and become heir of the family, he leapt at the opportunity. Witless, illiterate, slothful, gluttonous, he is a puppet of Odelia through and through, though he imagines himself fit for a king.

Jessamine Lethelock née Grund

Daughter of a distant noble house, brought in by Odelia to marry Hieronymus. She cannot stand the sight of him and considers the family to be a wasted ruin. Her keen analytical eye gave her some benefit, though, in that she was able to find a means by which a lawyer could transfer the small amount of inheritance still in Hippolyta's name to herself. She has safely stored it back at Grundhome, for such a time when she might rid herself of this damned family.

Bianca

A candlemaker, beekeeper, and herb-seller from the hamlet. Killed by the command of Odelia, so as to make way for Hieronymus' marriage to Jessamine Grund. By all accounts she was a plain woman with ordinary virtues and ordinary vices.

Orca

By Aaron Blaise

Queen of the Black Waves and White Whales. Lady Leviathan. Mistress of the Deep Places. Orca collects titles like barnacles. Her reign is unquestioned and unchallenged by god or man, and has been as long as the stones can remember. Smart men fear her, wise men respect her, and fools come to learn why.

Orca is like an old queen cat: Her house, her rules. Follow the rules, and she doesn’t much care. Bring a petition forward and she might listen, but she probably won’t. Break the rules and she will suddenly care a whole lot.

The first rule of her house: dead of the northern seas are hers by right.

Sailors in the north pay their souls to Orca in advance: a measure each of blood, oil, and ambergris before each season begins. With the payment made, a man might ply the queen’s territory in her good graces until his heart is content and his purse is full. When he dies (and each of them shall die – the good graces of the Queen will protect them only from her anger, not her apathy), he shall be taken down beneath the waters to the Queen’s cold, black domain and join her legions of dead. If a sworn man dies upon land, his body must be returned to the sea by the night after next to uphold his part.

It’s a fair enough trade as anyone can tell you; A man can provide a comfortable living for his family on a whaler’s income, and Orca’s shade of undeath is not particularly dreadful in comparison to others.

Those who forgo paying the cost of their souls up-front pay with their lives later. Either Orca’s servants will hunt them down, or they will be killed and offered up to her by more sensible people. Orca is not above sending an entire nor’easter to claim a single man, so a little human sacrifice is not too great of a moral conundrum for those in the hard-bitten north.

Someone foolish enough to cross Orca must have a death wish, after all.

While other oceans have a great many rulers, any competition Orca may have had was long gone by the time man settled in the north. Since no power has stepped forth to claim they were exiled, it is safe to presume death.

by Nonparanoid

The Illhveli

Orca has four chief children, the illhveli. Unlike their mother, the hell-whales are not so apathetic towards mankind, and act with gleeful cruelty towards ships in their path. Orca provides no protection to her sworn men, but likewise she provides nothing for her wayward sons if some inspiring men wish to hunt them down. So far, none have succeeded, and many have been driven mad in the attempt.

The illhveli are:

Keel-Breaker – Oldest and wisest. White like snow. Shark-tooth necklace. Stone-cold killer. Willing to attack the shoreline.

Squid-Masher – Lonesome and bleak. Dives deep, returns with trophies. Wears a mantle upon his head like a bishop’s miter, tentacles tied under his chin. Believes himself to be mother’s favorite.

Scar-Bearer – Old wounds like a net of knotted ropes. Teeth broken on rudders, a crown of shattered harpoons. Wildest of the four.

Biter – Youngest. Vicious and condescending when alone, cowardly and submissive when in the presence of his brothers.

from Darkest Dungeon

The Dread and Dead Servants of Orca

Worms – The body of a hagfish, the head of a man. This is the punishment for not paying the proper respect. They will eat fish shit forever.

Dregs – The souls of those who have reneged on their oath and were not given to the sea by night after next. Shattered bones, bodies half-buried in silt. Movement is possible, but only with incredible pain. Their graying guts are bloated with burrowing Worms.

Draugr – A sworn man of Orca. Pale hair floating in a ghostly halo. Flesh gone white and doughy, but strong as stone. Barnacle armor. Those who die aboard ship are marked with a tarred club and a sailcloth robe: those who drown are tinged a royal blue and carry stones.

Beyond the dead of the northern seas, Orca is served by a motley array of other beings: leopard-selkies, darkwater nymphs, rusalka, bergmen, frilled serpents, great albatrosses.

by davesrightmind

The Black Amazons

Orca’s cult is maintained by the black amazons of the far north. Few other humans will worship her, in the same way that the sight of a man with a sword is rarely a reason to light incense and chant litanies.

The black amazons are still human, despite the vast differences in appearance: they stand around eight or nine feet tall, with a broad build and protective layer of blubber. Their skin is jet black and hairless, with white upon the abdomen and flanks. Their noses are smoothed down and protrude only a little. To the unskilled eye it is difficult to determine that they are female at all.

Men are rare among the black amazons – animic leftovers that occasionally resurface in the eggs, with a slightly higher but still slight chance when hatched by another amazon. Those that are born are sickly albinos rarely surviving birth or the years to follow. Those that do manage to survive are made eunuch-priests, who handle interactions with the dead and Orca’s other servants. Every need and desire of theirs is met, but they are not permitted outside of their people’s strongholds. Many live from birth to death within the same temple chambers, never stepping outside.

The black amazons raid settlements across the north by both land and sea, seeking honor, tribute, and wives. Their souls are given over to Orca from their conception, and as part of her blessing they are returned in the form of ambergris eggs, ready to be incubated and reincarnated. With no fear of death so long as their mistress lives, the amazons throw themselves into combat with songs of black humor.

Captives taken in raids are treated relatively well (by enslavement standards – we’re still talking about “don’t damage your property” as opposed to “people who aren’t us have the right to not be enslaved by us”), but the tradition paints does little to improve relations with their neighbors.

However, the amazonian concept of battle-cost acts in the favor of those who are victim to their wars: with the loss of life a temporary setback, wars are fought for material goods, and may be ended when one side pays the other a mutually-agreed-upon amount. This is a lopsided trade when fighting against non-amazons (as you will still be down however many men are killed), but a spirited defense might see captives released and supply stores returned. Things get complicated when the amazon tribe in question has already paid a town’s booty to another tribe before a second round of combat. (The tale of Utte Hamvardr is a good illustrative point here, as he had to fight his way through five amazonian tribes to recover his wife)

Outside of war, the black amazons are known for fermented fish snacks, elaborately-woven carpets, comedic bardic traditions, bear-boxing, and a sleek breed of landwhale called the shumaoo.

The black amazons name themselves the dhorch’maeh, the empire of Darvatius named them the orcinae, and in much of the world now they are called by a twice-removed mispronunciation: orcs.

A Final Note

Drunken whalers in Tin Jacob’s Town claim that she was once married to Mundo the Seal. Mundo says it's true, but he's a lying bastard. He's also always honest. Asking Orca about it is considered a bad idea.

Satchel Buck’s Lonely Souls Club

Source unknown

A great red-and-purple striped tent appears outside of town. Paper cranes fly through the streets, perch on the eaves of churches, peck at breadcrumbs in the town squares – unfolded, they are advertisements printed out on overwrought stationary a century and a half out of style, promising “A meanes of Connection betweene single Persons of alle Strypes, forre reasonabul Prices.”

Satchel Buck’s Lonely Souls Club is in town, come on down and see the band.

Satchel Buck is a male human in his 40s – swarthy, portly, and always wearing garishly bright motley (The colors change daily). He will react positively to any sort of interest in the Club and will very enthusiastically explain his business to anyone present – willingness to listen is optional. He’ll sell the benefits of the Club for all its worth. He’ll have to be told twice to let it go.

His wife is named Othan, a bluish-pink creature reminiscent of a gigantic sea slug, with an eight-lobed eye and a mane of feathery antenna. She keeps the books, takes care of the oxen, and maintains the spells that run the club. If she’s out of the wagon (she tends towards long afternoon naps, but is usually up later in the evening), she’ll be willing to converse with party members who seem to be having a good time. If Satchel is present, he’ll provide all sorts of sickeningly sweet anecdotes of how they met and so on

The interior of the Club is a dark, cozy space filled with several dozen round tables, each with two chairs. The outer wall is lined with other doors, each with a number above it, through which other patrons will enter or exit. Satchel will make note that, while it is possible to go through other doors, it may become very difficult to return, and so he does not advise it except as a major life choice. Keep a good hold on your ticket and remember your number.

Patrons of the club are encouraged to move from table to table, listen to the band, and partake in the buffet. A single session in the Club lasts for one hour (long enough for four good introductions) and costs 15 gold, though an extension can always be purchased from Satchel or Othan. Any other questions can be answered by the servers on the floor.

The especially brave can have a wedding right then and there, officiated by an automaton cleric-cabinet. The automaton is frightening and not to be trusted, but comes with interchangeable rites of marriage appropriate to most major religions. It costs 50 gold for a basic marriage package. A lawyer of the Selachii School is on staff for divorce as needed, but he tends to charge an arm and a leg. He will provide a bonesaw free of charge, if you find yourself in need of it.

Behind the Curtain

Satchel is deep in debt and will be found in the wagon with his kneecaps shattered three days after the Club arrives in town. Othan will be missing, Satchel will insist everything is okay (despite his injuries) and the Club will depart the next day.

The next time the party encounters the Club (1d4 major settlements later), Othan will be running the Club and Satchel will be gone. She will remain tight-lipped on the subject, to the point of having the party escorted out of the club if they persist.

Satchel owes money to:

1. Dungbeetle Billy and his Curious Cabal
2. The Lynching Tree, hungry for gold around its roots.
3. The Green Cutter Gang
4. Anessa, his ex-wife.
5. A painting of a crippled man
6. Mammon, duke of Hell.

Try Your Luck and See Where Your Heart Leads You!

Simply tell Satchel who you're looking for and he'll set you right up! You may take the 'Somewhat Adventurous Option" to sub out one of their four meetings with a denizen of table 3. For a little something extra, run these tables alongside the Easy Family Trees,  Don't forget those reaction rolls!

I’m Looking for Men... (d66)

11. Homely turnip farmer

12. Librarian wizard

13. Androzon stage actor

14. Nightmare painter

15. Sports warrior

16. Nightsoil priest of Cloacina

21. Terminally ill Romantic poet

22. An aged golem-sculptor

23. A shell-shocked veteran of the War

24. Necromancer’s gardener

25. Oolian runaway

26. Cartography guildsman

31. Three goblins in an overcoat

32. Unscrupulous industrialist

33. Vulture priest

34. Byronian swordsman

35. Coffee-brewer, enterprising entrepreneur

36. Misshapen gunslinger

41. Pillar-saint of Irem

42. Self-taught plantain mage

43. Jaded haruspex

44. A lonely bureaucrat of Hell

45. Friendly nudist who needs a workout

46. Guardsman for rent

51. Jellybean counter

52. Pearl diver, gave up his noble title

53. Despairing time-slave

54. Skunk-ape-man

55. Sailor of the Midnight Sky

56. Tosher of the Merde Grande

61. One of the thousand emperors of Hispir

62. Hidebound, incompetent honor-warrior

63. Wizarding student expelled for summoning a succubus on campus

64. Eclipse-reader, writing a book of Sun-Lore

65. Bulette-rider postman

66. Silk pirate looking to settle down

I’m Looking for Ladies... (d66)

11. Demonologist and natural philosopher, cheery and determined.

12. Plays the jazz trumpet, is and has a cool cat

13. Amazonian warrior, home from the War

14. Maple dryad in need of a change

15. Emancipated homunculus

16. Professional catfisher, tells whoppers

21. Chiurgeon with an iron stomach

22. Constantly wears boneplate and chitin armor

23. Farmgirl with a sword and a dream

24. Bhedunin priestess released from her family obligations

25. Landsquid hunter, a native of the Outback

26. Up-and-coming witch

31. An Autumn Knight. Peaceful, melancholic.

32. Wandering Color-Maker

33. Crab-rider nun, looking for adventure

34. Another PC’s younger sister

35. The Garbage Queen, down and out

36. Rottweiler cynocephalus, over-affectionate

41. Mermaid in a fishtank golem

42. Shamaness of the Ammonite

43. Gun-Saint of An-Hehm

44. Pyromancer of the Obsidian Islands

45. An anglerwife out for a new husband

46. Elderly book merchant

51. Keeper of demon-bees, seller of hell-honey

52. A Sin-Eater, friendly and forgiving

53. Insufferable magical princess

54. Cryptosaurian infiltrator in a skinsuit.

55. Arch-Penitent: crime unknown, sentence most severe

56. Gonzo investigative reporter with a finely tuned, Detect Bullshit aura

61. Iron-eyed oathbreaker from the North. A woman of few words.

62. Simpleminded noodle chef. Has the magic touch.

63. Stockbroker with no volume control.

64. A foxy lady. Absolute tease, watch the tail.

65. A Black Amazon death-raider, follower of Orca

66. Proxy body of a Solar Sailfin.

I’m (d6)…

1. Looking for ways to mess with my smartass players
2. Looking for very particular options.
3. Not picky at all.
4. A smartass player
5. A horrible deviant with no shame whatsoever

11. A skeleton in a dinner suit, accompanied by three black cats.

12. An indistinct humanoid form frozen in a block of ice, communicates through shimmering letters on the surface.

13. A modestibus. Hopelessly clingy and terribly repressed.

14. A terrible obsidian idol, hungry for blood.

15. MURDER-CUBE, eternal enemy of DEATH-BALL

16. A dice-god, bored and looking for a game.

21. A gigantic, all-devouring and incredibly evil spider attempting and failing to act sexy

22. A Parasaurolophus

23. Amalgamation of a thousand alternate universe versions of a street sweeper

24. DEATH-BALL, eternal enemy of MURDER CUBE

25. A county-sized colonial fungus, wishes to become a real country

26. A large iron hook, hanging from a rope that trails up into infinity. There is a bowl set around it containing a rack of barbecue ribs, with corn cobs, coleslaw, and a bottle of beer. A hand-painted sign reads “FRI FUD 2 HUNGRI PEEPLE.”

31. The Gloaming Beast. Looks fearsome, is actually quite gentle.

32. Astral parasite, wants a new head to live in.

33. Three tons of sapient lasagna

34. A rampallious Fustilarian

35. An enthusiastic mimic who always gets something wrong

36. Great Big CrunchyMunch, King of Breakfast Cereals

41. Owlbear in a schoolgirl outfit

42. A figure in a dark cloak, with oversized, sweaty hands. Quite nervous.

43. Philosophical Zombie (1. Pythagorean 2. Confucian 3. Thomist 4. Marxist)

44. Animated cast-iron gimp suit

45. Man-sized Faberge cocoon, about to hatch

46. Medic-beetle. Enjoys sewing things back together. Maybe a bit too much.

51. Infectiously positive yellow monopod, constantly hopping about

52. A hairy biped with a head like a fiery wagon wheel. Well versed in esoteric meditation.

53. Vat containing a talkative Chili Platonic.

54. Laconic black hole farmer from the end of the universe

55. Curious entity that communicates entirely through tea leaves.

56. The Burning Monolith. Look upon it and despair, mortal.

61. A chalkboard filled with living mathematics

62. Death, who has had a few too many drinks

63. A human head, inside a chicken, inside a turkey, inside a pig, all cooked and piping hot

64. A knobbly orange crab inside a geode that screams obscenities at the sun

65. A very, very, very large kidney stone. Looks vaguely like a moai head.

66. Mundo the Seal. ALL HAIL MUNDO.

"Size Matters" by James Zapata

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