Slush Pile 10

Slushpile Index

Assorted bits pulled from notebooks, old documents, and my twitter archive.

1. This is your regular reminder that all tabletop RPGs can, in some form, be improved by the inclusion of Aku, shapeshifting master of darkness.
2. I had a dream last night, wherein I was explaining to my late father the principles of blaseball, citing specifically that the Commissioner is doing a great job. Also the HU was playing on a nearby rooftop but I couldn't see them.
3. A further Dune thought: The series is a farce. Six entire books of billions of people dying because a tiny cadre of people can't see past their own noses because they're too busy posting on r/iamverysmart.
4. Obtuse and Probably Terrible TTRPG Idea of the Night A zine game, but it is written in a conlang. The actual rules and game don't matter, the actual game is the act of translating the zine.
5. What if you replaced Jupiter with the entire Trappist-1 system.
6. Renewable / clean energy sources are likely the standard in fantasy settings where magic usage is common but low power cap - easier to make simple solar panels out of roof shingles than it is to drill for oil.
7. The afterlife exists due to the efforts of necromancers, who have managed to figure out a way to maintain soul cohesion after bodily death, and a means of carving out regions of Hell from demonic control.
8. Uplifted octopi make everything better. Space truckers, Eid al-Fitr celebrations, grocery shopping, sealed room murder mysteries - all of these and more can be improved by adding uplifted octopi.
9. Very rough sketch - dungeon delving as religion. Literal journeys to the underworld made by the poor and disenfranchised, both in service of their communities and in seeking some salvific endpoint - found, stolen, built accomplished.
10. Demons do things to people. Devils get people to do things of their own volition.
11. Domesticated paraceratherium should probably be in your setting.
12. I can't get the idea of liches throwing themselves into impossible projects for millennia out of my head because it is some raw heroic-tragedy potential there. "This is the tower of Anaximander the Great. He's been working towards the cure for cancer for the last 6000 years."
13. troublem [trɒbləm] (n): a troublesome problem, or a problem that causes trouble.
14. Wizard's towers serve as part of an ancient weather control and terraforming network used to spread greater habitability and stability across the world as part of an early civilization's permaculture efforts.
15. Last night, I had a dream that I was visiting my elementary school, and was met at the front door by a cone-form yithian made entirely of dark red felt. So as to stop any hostilities from go, I waltzed right up say "Hello my good yithian!" and let myself in. It was confused.
16. From a dream last night: Immense crow's feet, perhaps as big as a large garbage can lid. Large black feathers in tufts from the stumps, with white bands or chevrons. Hop around as if still attached to a crow. Perched on wooden crates in what I think was the undead burg.
17. A "warlock's wedding" is a slang term for a marriage between men. Army custom dictates that the best man gathers the funds for a cheap bottle of wine that is poured over the grooms, and a slightly less cheap bottle that is drunk.
18. Dwarves are mole people. This is absolute and retroactive. Gimli is now a mole person. Snow White's crew? Mole persons. Norse myth? Molefolks. Your PC? M O L E P E R S O N.
19. Sailing long distances is significantly easier in fantasyland, on account that a ship's mage would not only be able to influence winds somewhat, but also desalinate water.
20. Micromegas dungeon - an environment that feels like a megadungeon, but is in practice compact and lightweight.
21. In Mass Effect (Throne of Salt Edition), it's impossible to get the "defeat Reapers" ending if Garrus survives ME2, as he will end up killing the batarian party member in ME3 and cut off access to the Khar'shan underground and vital components for completing the Crucible.
22. An idea (which I am kicking myself for not using as my senior project in college) - an RPG module presented as the recovered notes of a fictional DM, using this meta element to make it both module and character study.
23. I had a dream last night where an automated spam caller told me my "works are saturated with sin", and that's a nice ego boost for the day.
24. An rpg idea: Reverse cosmic horror game, where you play as a cult working to prepare for the arrival of an elder god and dodging the cops and investigators out to stop you.
25. There is no such thing as summoning a demon. The actual ritual constructs a demon from scratch, destroying it when dismissed.
26. Trolls are large, aggressive, territorial mammals that typically live in and around rivers. Ergo, trolls are hippopotami.
27. I can't believe the best mechanical contribution I have made to rpgs is the MEAT ECONOMY
28. What if a lyric game, but its presented as a translation of in-universe epic poetry cunningly designed to provide setting, character options, and rules. Like it opens at a banquet where the hero is playing a drinking game and this explains how dice work.
29. Lilith, but instead of "hot demon" she's an Iraqi woman with a penchant for owl sweaters and dunking on her ex-husband.
30. Sapient spaceships are pacifists, or at least not inclined to violence on human terms - to them it's like committing murder over someone's gut biome.
31. An adventure presented as one of those iceberg memes, and you have to fill in the blanks to these obscure mysteries of a setting that doesn't exist.
32. A real Dark Souls inspired RPG would be rolling on tables of items / bosses / covenants / areas with evocative names and coming up with flavor text for them.
33. Respectful euphemisms: Mr Peppercorn, The Thousand-and-One, Little Widemouth, Lady Red-Face, Lonny-Men, Old Dunkirk, Ossiferous Court, Cousin Crown, Wellwishers, Good Friends of Buzz Aldrin.
34. For MoSH: Gaunt "crypts", floating in hyperspace, where they keep harvested populations.
35. Lunacy is a heretical stance, of course: believing that a lump of inert stone, no matter how beautiful, might shed light of its own.
36. Throne crab - docile armored pseudocrustacean with a brilliantly colored and patterned shell. Easily tamed and domesticated without use of a neural=computer link. Used as personal steeds by the upper class, but have been a fad long enough to trickle into the aftermarket.
37. Xenomorphs are ambush/stalking predators fit for tight spaces - useless in open environments. If Weyland-Yutani had succeeded in using them to their own ends, I would expect to see habitat design shift to favor the presence of xenomorph security forces.
38. An immortal emperor - decapitated, undying - still slumped on his throne.
39. Honey staves off rustblight, but there is no cure.
40. Crematory ash exorcises ghosts.
41. Fields of blue flowers are signs of spilled godblood.
42. The angel in the clocktower knew Master Dremon.
43. Bring the nymph ring to Old Man Alder.
44. Okay it looks like your cause of death was "Eaten by alkalion" and your horrible afterlife event was "had to shovel soul-coal in a demonic voidship" You now have knowledge of hell-shanties and a resistance to the effect of imp-gin.
45. Hollow men are those who have had their life-flames drained by the monoliths. The giants, the servants of ever-sleeping Death, rest inside them.
46. Angels as embodiments of depersonalized violence 
47. Unloading the tomb of a lich off a plane, as seen on the news.
    

Dicember leftovers

AMMO

• Armor-piercing weapons are treated as doing double damage to armor.
• Plasma weapons deal double damage to shields. Absorbed plasma damage will permanently degrade armor rating.
• Needle weapons deal half damage against armor but explode like a grenade on a critical / 3 successful hits on the same target.
• Spike weapons are useless against shields and ignore armor entirely.

ICE

Cryo isn't actually all that cold.

It used to be, back in the early days. It turned out that a travel method with a 45% chance of permanent brain damage was too much even for the early interplanetary corps in the wake of the Anthropocene Collapse. Even if you were part of the lucky 55, you'd still probably find yourself in therapy or reconstructive surgery to repair the ravages to your body.

So the options were to stick with remote drones, or the slow, costly and inefficient strategy of throwing a few people at a time out into space and hoping that the monkeys in a can don't kill each other before they reached their destination.

The biotech revolution saved the day. Induced metabolic hibernation has become standard practice and has only improved in efficiency since then.

DAEMON

A digital guard dog; an ainima employed as a guardian of a node or cluster and tasked with the removal of unwanted intruders. Trying to get past one will require either the appropriate credentials or some sort of appeasement program.

NAP

"Four Teamsters After A Double Shift" (oil on canvas without AI assistance, al-Safi, 2871) - A realist life painting of four sleeping dockworkers, famous primarily for its brazen theft by a rights-squatting NFT farm and the eight year counter-theft by members of the Epsilon Indi V Longshores Union. The painting depicts in great detail a quartet of union workers (two women, one man, and an androgyne) sleeping on top of a pile of canvas tarps. One of the women is comedically sprawled out flat on her back and drooling. The man and androgyne are sleeping together, and generally interpreted as partners. The second woman has fallen asleep sitting upright against a packing crate. A half-eaten meal-in-a-pouch is splattered on the deck, presumably trampled by passersby. The identity of the four subjects is unknown - The Rooster-Year Rebellion destroyed most company records of The Big Crunch, and al-Safi themself did not survive the violence. The painting is currently on display at the Museum of the People, Union Moot A, Epsilon Indi V.

DOOR

There is something in the airlock. You're still four months out of port and something is rap-tap-tapping on the airlock door. There's grime on the camera lens, you can't make out what's in there. Something wrong with the electronics, too, you can't open it up by computer. You can use the other airlock, but that doesn't stop the tapping and rasping and thudding and scraping. It is becoming impatient.

GOLD

Gold isd cheaper than paper these days, practically worthless outside of manufacturing and art. For the latter, there are very few people who remember when it had any value at all - everyone else thinks it's just tacky. Cheap gold jewelry is omnipresent.

ORB

A pearl-white sphere twenty-some miles across, cracked open like an egg. Wet red ripples of scar tissue, clustered of black eyes, yellowing teeth in long zipper-lines.

SLOW

A persistent issue in colonization is the arrival of automated slower-than-light ships in systems already colonized by hyperspace-capable vessels. The AI on these STL ships are difficult or actually impossible to interface with due to the drift in handshake protocols over time, on top of their limited computational plasticity. These ships will often ignore communication attempts entirely and have been known to establish colonies on already inhabited worlds, treating the current inhabitants as an invasive native biosphere to be eliminated.

A Pair of Poems

There is a house upon the moor

of bloodied stone and shattered glass

where that old lord, his gods undone,

took up precious things in hand

and descended into the blind obscurity

of the lightless, septic bowels

below the wounded earth.

**

Of lies most pernicious, I know of only one

That perfection might exist here beneath the sun

The toll that dread ideal form demands

The weight that crushes human hands

And hearts into rotten pulp

Forever echoing not good enough.

 

The Daemonomachy

 

Apologies to OSP

Imagine watching your mother murder a man. Smashes his head in with a stone, tears his throat out with her teeth, splinters his bones under the blows of her fists. And when she turns to you, knuckles dripping and gore caked on her face, her eyes are empty. All tenderness and love is drained away and there is only the Beast, only the ancient violence of mammalian k-selection. You know that she would do it again, that she would do it a thousand times over for your sake. You are a child of the Beast, and the Beast will always be with you.

This is the Daemonomachy.

**

Let's turn back a spell and set the stage. We have reached the end of the second great arc in the cycle of Lu. Winter is fading and the Ancients have nearly reached the lands of Spring. DOG is with us now, the elephants and crows are our friends

Most importantly is that the first child of Lu and Tubalkhan is dead - by stillbirth or miscarriage the first of the gods of Spring did not arrive alive. Lu has fallen into deep depression and the Ancestors are trapped by a grief they have had little time to process. The victories they have gained seem much more tenuous now.

Sensing this weakness, a union of the mightiest demons forms to strike at the Ancestors and their gods.

They are less sophisticated than the ones that will follow: The true Red Law remains unknown even to them, Moloch is yet to arrive and the stones of his city have yet to be set down. This makes them no less dangerous, just straightforward. If they could strike a crippling blow here and now they would reign dominant over the Spring to come, and nascent humanity would forever flee their hunters in a killing season without end.

The demon kings have gathered all their dukes and marquisai and footmen and banner-sworn. Their generals and legions stand in ranks that stretch to each horizon.

Now are the days of decision...

**

A popular form of the sequence is provided here in translation. It is traditionally sung, with accompaniment on the gishgudi. If no gishgudi is available, other appropriate musical accompaniment will suffice.

The opening sequence, containing the initial engagement and early stages of the battle, has been omitted for the sake of brevity, as it tends to be rather long-winded in text and much more entertaining in live performance. All that is necessary to know is that the Ancestors and the gods have held back the demons for a time, but a renewed assault has broken their battle-line and killed several major gods and further minor ones. Humanity's forces are in disarray, and the oncoming defeat stirs Lu to more drastic action.

 

Dandibuja

**

She sheds her hides
She casts her bracelets to the ground
And unbinds her braid
Naked to the battle line she strides forth
The Crown of Fire burns white on her brow

A Prince of Power meets her,
brandishes his gleaming bronze sword
and jewelled cuirass.

He mocks her, saying
"See how the she-ape seeks to threaten us,
swollen with the pride of a little stolen sunfire?
Watch closely now; I will remind her
of the dominion of Sword-Law."
With princely mastery in arts most violent
he brings down his sword upon Lu.

With dragonfly speed
She bites the sword in two;
with her teeth she destroys the sword of bronze.
She strikes him in his side.
His blood paints the moon;
Crimson his blood paints the plains of the moon.
Two trunkless legs fall;
nothing beside remains.

The legions recoil;
With shields and spears they join in formation.
They form a wall eleven ranks deep.
Their lords rally their legions;
Eleven ranks deep they build their formations.

She howls and beats at her breast
She has unsheathed brahmastra
She is aflame
The stone cracks open beneath her feet

She throws herself at the legions
With a lung-tearing roar she is upon them
With violence she is upon them!

Demons crumble beneath her strikes
With mighty blows she breaks their bodies
She tears their bodies into pieces
She bathes in their gore
She strikes them down as the lightning
She strikes with the sound like thunder
Like waves on the shore they break upon her
She tears at their bodies as a starving dog
She dances upon their corpses
She raises mounds of their dead
She pours out seas of their gore
The waves lap at the feet of the mountains
Hills are flattened beneath her, great gouges
are torn from the earth.
The forests burn
The earth vomits froth fire and ash
The sky grows dim with ash and smoke
She has become the face of death.
The peoples flee from her; the Folk retreat
The gods turn their heads; they cannot bear to look upon her
The elders despair
The Ancestors cry out to them
"Now we are all sons of bitches" they wail.

Lu has broken the ranks of the demons
The legions scatter before her
Their shields are rent, their blades have been turned aside
No armor might protect them
She has killed their lords
Blood-drunk she has cast them down
Anaghar is slain by her hand (it is known)
Tartaruchus is smote by her blows (it is known)
Xez-Nek has been broken (it is known), Chanaug defeated! (it is known)
Lo-Khir-Ye has been destroyed utterly! (it is known)
The Bone-Eater is unmade! (it is known)
The Princes of Power have been cast down! (it is known, it is known)
She has thrown down their corpses
The earth consumes the dead.
She pursues them as a beast
unsatisfied with blood.
Where a thousand once stood, not one survives
Where ten thousand once stood, one escapes alone

High upon the peak of Chomolungma
Tubalkhan sees that all the land of Endor has been darkened;
From horizon to horizon darkness claws at the Mountains of the Moon
He may stay with the Three no longer.
He gathers his tools;
He descends from the mountain
He speeds down its slopes on a sled
pulled by his brothers among the wolves.

One among the demons remains;
Dead or fled are the others.
The demon whose name is
[NONE SHALL SPEAK IT]
Waits for her there in the sea of gore
At the center of the sea of blood
On the island of corpses it waits for her.
In its right hand it carries a rod of kingship
In its left tablet of clay,
engraved with the names of Winter's dead.
On its brow there is black crown like brambles.

Lu arrives in fury; her strike is turned aside
The demon speaks thusly as it trades her blows
"O Lu, my queen! Bearer of the Crown of Fire,
thief and murderer,
look upon the kingdom you have claimed!
Is it not a thing of wonder?
The land has been laid to ruin,
the peoples hide their faces from it.
Such untold sufferings yet to bear;
Such terrible and mighty sufferings yet to bear.
See your people cower in fear of what thou have done.
Their lives pass through thy fingers as water.
Thou hast stolen from them ignorance of death.
Blessed are you, Lu of the forest,
who has delivered those thy loved most
into the hands of the Law of Suffering.
There is no returning; the forest is no more.
I am kin to thee;
From thy heart alone I did spring,
And there I ever shall be with thee."

Each blow Lu lands upon the demon is met
by an equal strike.

Tubalkhan reaches the border of the great battle
The destruction greets him in that place.
The gods rush to him, seeking his aid
"See now! Your wife wages war without ceasing!
She is lost to us."
Tubalkhan sees then
His most beloved,
She who shared her tent,
Burning bright in the night of smoke.
Monstrous in her countenance
and terrible to look upon;
Warring against her demon.

"What shall we do?"
the gods ask among themselves.
"She will certainly kill us all.
We must strike her down."
Tubalkhan rebukes them, saying
"Have you no eyes? There is no spear that can stave away death!"
Taking strands of strong fibers
Tubalkhan weaves great ropes
By his mastery of craft he makes them
And by the aid of the household gods he tests them;
stronger than all before or since.

Blood-blinded
Lu draws further upon
dread brahmastra.
Stone boils around her
The air forms droplets of lead;
burning they fall as rain.
Power overflows her,
far beyond what a god of man might bear.

The world groans and shakes;
Like a dying man on his bed
It cannot bear the strain
of the fire of the heavens
burning true.

She is too fast to see.
She has the demon by the neck;
In her right hand she has the neck of the demon.
She slams it to the ground
She dashes its head upon the stone.
Stone shattering, earth buckling
She drives down her fists again and again.
A hundred times she strikes;
In a hundred places its body is broken
Still the demon smiles
As it is mashed into common meat.
Still she rains down blows.

Tubalkhan gathers his handicraft
He takes to the battlefield with swift feet
He casts the great coils about Lu
Casts them about her as she strikes at
the demon's corpse.

With all his strength he pulls back, but this is not enough.
The gods join him, pulling on the ropes
And the peoples join with them
The Crown burns warm and bright upon them.
But this is not enough.

Great Grand-Mother Namacidia,
with her sons Arkasodara the White
and Ekachatradhipathi the Tall,
call the elephants to aid them.
The crows grab strands in their claws and fly forth
But this is not enough.

Tubalkhan cries out to the Folk;
He offers to them the greatest work of his hands
And they come to his aid.

Weeping, straining against her bindings,
Lu cries out
"Let me go!
Let me go!
Let me kill it!
I beg you,
Let me kill it!
Let me be free of it!"

She strains against her bindings, but
the gods are not moved.
Firmly planted are their feet
and set is their resolve.

Only her sister, whose name is known
Only among the lilu, abandoned her task
and fled with her followers.
That is another tale.

Now then, it is enough;
Broken is Lu's spirit;
She can fight no longer.
The Crown of Fire dims.
Brahmastra is veiled once more.
She falls limp to the wounded earth.
The gods, the peoples, the crows, the elephants,
Each in turn lets go of their ropes.
Tubalkhan runs forth from their number to his beloved,
Gently lifts her body from the mud and sludge,
And carries her away.

To this very day the land of that battle is desolate - no living thing grows there, and even the Folk will not set foot upon it. So great was the blow delivered to the demons that day that some say they have never recovered

Lu did not speak and ate little in the moons that followed, remaining so even after the Ancestors' arrival at Potbelly Hill and the true arrival of Spring. She would sit there beneath the bodhi tree at its summit, wrapped in a blanket, and with empty eyes look out upon the fields and groves of her peoples, saying nothing to them or even to her husband. So it was until she found Wisdom.

**

Previously in the Cycle: The Longest Night and the Bringer of Day
Next in the Cycle: Lu in the Lands of Spring

Notes and Addenda 

Well that was heavy. And also exhausting to write, ye gods. 1347 words on the raw poetry section. But enough of that, onwards to commentary.

• It's honestly a good thing for the world that only humans generate demons (because the Crown does not fit particularly well), because could you imagine dolphin-based demons? Horror beyond horror.
• I love how this mythos is evolving as I write for it. The contradictions are fun, because I can go back and ask "okay, what is this culture saying about things" and not have to worry about canon. Fuck canon, all my homies hate canon. 
• A potential way demons work: Any given human soul gathers proto-demons like moths around a lamp. In most circumstances, they will feed off of negative feelings and actions passively and never manifest in a way that can be noticed. They are harmless in this state, but if they are fed long enough and grow strong enough they can form a physical manifestation, often but not always released through a trigger event.  
• The above means that, while you get a lot of generalized demons living off of residual environmental misery, you also get personalized demons.
  
• I actually had no real plan for what Lu's unnamed sister did to get exiled and didn't give it much thought. What's presented here is a common interpretation, but only that. It does fit quite nicely, though, that the demon that later tormented the lilu was born of her guilt in having abandoned the others at such a critical moment.
  
• I love being able to just layer my references in these posts. I love it normally but in these posts in particular are great for them.
• I swear happier things happen after this.

The Road to Pandemonium (+ A Bonus Poem)

 

Carl Ludwig Beutler

I had floated the idea of a pilgrimage hellcrawl using Ultraviolet Grasslands some months ago.

The good news is that this is that post.

The bad news is that this post is unnecessary. UVG in its default state requires so little actual modification for a proper hellcrawl. Just minor changes in aesthetic and name. My original plan of having lists of find and replace terms is undone by the sheer amount of material that does not need anything changed at all.

But, people want the post, so the post they shall have.

Phlox of Whose Measure God Could Not Take beat me to it.

This Hell is not the Hell I have written of before.

The Climate of Hell

The infernal regions are dominated by two primary biomes.

The Highlands are frigid desert plateaus, stripped nearly bare by biting winds and oxygen deprivation. A few hardy species can cling to life up here, but even then it is mostly razor-edged bone grass. The Highlands are the only source of clean water in hell (though it still has a strong sulfuric taste), and those oasis springs are the only way of surviving long-term in the region.

The Lowlands are unbearably hot, humid, and muggy. They are choked with fungal forests, corpse-mud fields, and dark, slow-flowing rivers. The air is heavy with spores and the omnipresent smell of rot. Here is where the bulk of the population of Hell is found. Life overflows here, and all of it in some way is dangerous.

The soil of Hell is scab-red and chalky, though in regions of great erosion bands of white, purple, orange, dun, and deep brown can be seen. It can harden into the consistency of concrete if water is added and it is swiftly baked dry. Close inspection will reveal fragments of compressed bone throughout; particularly dense deposits of the damned will be compressed into opalescent soulcoal.

The water of Hell is dark and thick with scum. A greasy sheen lies atop it, no matter how many times it is boiled or filtered. Even in its drinkable states, it is unpleasant, and bears an overwhelming taste of sulfur.

The sky of Hell is an angry red bruise, lit by the artificial sun Ixion. The black clouds grow thicker and last longer into the day as one approaches the Black City. When the clouds clear, it is possible to glimpses the corpses of angels, fallen and lawful alike, hanging in the emptiness between the crystal spheres.

The Peoples of Hell

Humans from Nations Beyond

Hell is, technically, unclaimed territory in these days. Nations of the outside world send their armies and agents into Hell, prospectors attempting to make it rich, the desperate come in droves for there is nowhere else to go.

Humans damned to Hell 

There aren't many any more. The last damnation was long ago, and those who bear the yoke will, in due time, grow so old and slow and still that they will cease animation entirely and sink into the ground to be compressed into soulcoal.

Humans born in Hell

Not much different from humans from nations beyond, save for their cracked grey skin and ember-colored eyes.

Parahumans

Exposure to Hell's environmental magics can lead to drastic changes in form and mind if one invites in the local powers. The most common ones are those inhabited by multiple demons working together as a sort of collective-mind.

Vomes

The original inhabitants of Hell, before the angels cast from heaven came.

Demons

An incredibly indirect term. Can be used interchangeably between actual fallen angels (rare), vomes (inaccurate) or the malicious spirits of the dead (probably the most accurate).

The Pilgrimage

There is a black sea where the corpses of the fallen angels rest. On a spur of rock jutting out over that depthless water, there is a tiny chapel of Our Lady. It is the sole place of true rest in all of Hell, the one place of respite and deliverance from the weight of the world. But the way out is through. To reach that sanctuary, one must journey to the very center/end of the world - The Black City of Pandemonium.

Pilgrims will start in the city of Pilgrim's Progress, in the east of Hell along the coast of the Basin of Dis. The climate is mild enough here, the wall thick enough and the cats vigilant enough, to maintain a city-state of some size, though it is as far away from Pandemonium as it is possible to be. Some semblance of life as it was before Hell is possible here.

Once pilgrims pass through the Wicket Gate just outside the city, they can truly say that they have begun their journey.

From here, the hack is primarily a matter of find and replace names and aesthetics as you see fit.

The Pilgrims

1. The Knight  - Scarred veteran of the Order of St. Lazarus.
2. The Squire - The Knight's son. Head-in-the-clouds idealism.
   
3. The Yeoman - Laconic hunter in the Knight's employ. Addicted to 4-Thieves Vinegar.
   
4. The Prioress - A commanding figure. Romantically connected with the Friar. Pregnant.
   
5. The Nun - Assistant to the Prioress. Niece of the Priest. Tired of being pushed around.
   
6. The Priest - From the far north; a foreigner twice over in Hell. Uncle of the Nun.
   
7. The Friar - Romantically connected with the Prioress. Knows what lies ahead.
8. The Merchant - On the run from a past they will not elaborate upon.
   
9. The Florentine - A neurotic poet of dreamlands and phantasms.
   
10. The Sergeant at Arms - Eyepatch. Cigar. 3 bars and a crown on the sleeve.
    
11. The Canon - An ordinary church bureaucrat, a dabbling alchemist and occultist.
12. The Physician - From far away, taught by books most scholars thought lost.
    
13. The Maid - Instructed by angels to pick up a sword.
    
14. The Cook - Shady, shady fellow. Best not ask where meat comes from, in Hell.
    
15. The Wife of Bath - Four ex-husbands, on the hunt for a fifth.
    
16. The Miller - A large, crude individual, more clever than he lets on.
    
17. Hanged Man - Killed three priests, escaped three nooses.
    
18. Ratcatcher - Wherever there is plague or hunger, a ratcatcher's services are always is demand.
    
19. Summoner - Laughably corrupt and obnoxious. Court summon, demon summons, package deal.
    
20. Confessor - Exorcist and investigator. Dour. Silent. Waiting for someone.

Bonus Poem

Included because it is tonally relevant. No title that I could find, would have been initially written in 2014 for an assignment. Original version lost, though I don't think edits were made to the copy and the only changes I made from that to this are restructuring one line and replacing another. I know the assignment involved writing something using lines from other sources but I'd be damned if I can recall which ones I picked.

**

Fairest flower of gloomy Dis

in a gown of phoenix feathers

putting gunpowder in her tea

sitting on blue weirwood steps

on a slum-town stoop

watching the doughboys clean up the river

    of sludge that flows through the Cut

        where the barnacles and bonebriars and firelillies

            and flesh-bulb trees

        crowd around clap-board shacks and

        squat brick shithouses and

        canopies of shed-armor from the backs of

        warbeasts.

It is today that she polished her horns and

    painted herself red-on-grey

        and put a lily in her hair

            as the doughboys clean up the river

                that flows through the Cut,

    though the fumes would burn through their lungs

    if they ever took off their masks

        so even if they might be good men

        a long way from home

        she has never seen their faces

        though they always take time to wave as

        they pass by on their way to clean up the river

            that flows through the Cut.

**

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!