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

50 More Alternate History Divergence Points

First installment

THE TROUSERS OF TIME HAVE SPLIT AGAIN

1. Aleister Crowley successfully summons his guardian angel at Boleskine House; it immediately reduces him to constituent atoms and irradiates over a hundred square kilometers of Scottish countryside by presence alone.
2. A confederation of eastern hunter-gatherers and surviving neanderthal tribes successfully blocks Yamnaya migration into Europe.
3. Brief but peaceful contact is made with a team of alien academic observers in Australia c. ~14,000 BCE.
4. The excavation of Troy is handed off to literally anyone besides Heinrich Schliemann.
5. Five volumes of Emperor Claudius’ Tyrrhenika are discovered in a Lombard monastery, April 1378.
6. H.P. Lovecraft is drafted into the US army and dies on March 29, 1918 during the Battle of St. Quentin.
7. The Indian Plate migrates slower than in baseline, and has not yet collided with Asia by the time humans evolve.
8. Basque sailors discover a chain of islands west of the Azores in the early 1400s, which is swiftly called Atlantis by continental scholars.
9. Some absolute mad bastard of a Soviet linguist spends 40 years documenting Siberian languages in exhaustive detail, providing much firmer support for the Dene-Yeneseian hypothesis.
10. An anonymous Spanish clergyman, by some miracle of conscience, squirrels away 15 Maya codices that remain untouched until 1954.
11. A relatively small and relatively slow meteor hits the northern Atlantic Ocean in 1701, causing relatively catastrophic tsunamis.
12. Catherine Eddows fends off her attacker in the early morning of September 30th 1888, fracturing his skull, collarbone, and three vertebrae with a brick in a stocking; “Jack the Ripper” is found dead later that day.
13. A few clades of trilobites make the jump to land and/or freshwater and survive to the present day.
14. OH JESUS CHRIST SEA SCORPIONS NEVER WENT EXTINCT EITHER
15. Han dynasty scholars mostly-accurately reconstruct several dinosaur species.
16. Jimmy Hoffa’s body is found in 1990, having been stuffed inside the freezer of a Wendy’s franchise in Jersey City.
17. The Rosetta Stone is never lost.
18. The United States forgoes the use of nuclear weapons on Japan.
19. The 1998 Copyright Extension Act fails to pass.
20. Pre-Socratic philosophers devise a preliminary germ theory as an offshoot of atomism, where sickness is caused by harmful atoms entering the body.
21. Percival Lowell doesn’t jump to conclusions.
22. Mongol invasion of Japan finds initial but unsustainable success.
23. Alexander the Modestly Accomplished dies to an errant slingstone in 330 BC, toppling his Persian campaign.
24. Early church fathers are somehow persuaded to approve the practice of same-sex unions, on the grounds that it’s technically not called a marriage and the participants definitely promised to remain celibate.
25. Queen Victoria dies of tuberculosis in 1839.
26. Star Wars isn’t saved in the editing room, and achieves only modest success; its sequel, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, flops hard enough to shutter the franchise.
27. Tolkien ends up finishing and publishing that sequel novel to LotR.
28. Constantinople remains Constantinople, and does not become Istanbul.
29. Old New York remains New Amsterdam, and does not become New York.
30. Henry VIII decides it’s easier to just institute inheritance by adoption.
31. CPR invented by Abbasid physicians c. 900.
32. The Wars of the Three Kingdoms fail to establish the Commonwealth; Ireland and Scotland remain independent.
33. Someone slightly to moderately less bigoted than John Campbell serves as early science fiction’s tastemaker.
34. Christianity flounders in the Mediterranean and survives primarily in central Asia and India.
35. Sino-Soviet split never occurs. 
36. Monotremes make up ~1/4 of all mammal species on Earth.
37. Alien transmissions are detected nearly as soon as radio telescopy is introduced.
38. Major eruption of the Yellowstone hotspot in 1803.
39. Hawaii remains an independent kingdom.
40. Publication of Malleus Maleficarum is banned by the Church.
41. Elder Thing arcology detected during Artemis II lunar flyby.
42. USAF pursues 2003 “Rods from God” satellite weapons program.
43. A semi-successful IAL takes off through connections to the various early 20th century New Age movements.
44. Piltdown Man is immediately clocked as a hoax and gains minimal publicity.
45. Robert E. Howard dies of a stroke in 1982.
46. A series of mass shooting in the 1970s lead to a semblance of American gun control laws.
47. Common Brittonic isn’t displaced by Old English.
48. Augustine of Hippo remains a Manichaean.
49. Penicillin is discovered decades later.
50. Hokkaido maintains independence.

Or all of them at once, as usual.

100 Pulls from the Folk-Motif Index

The Stith Thompson Motif-Index of Folk Literature is not what I'd call a particularly useful text for real-world folkloric studies. It’s a big list of story elements shorn from their context, heavily weighted according to the biases of its composer, and full of entries that are either too broad to be a useful comparison or too specific to possibly exist in more than one tradition.

On the plus side: it’s a big list of story elements shorn from their context which means you can flip to a random page, start reading, steal everything you think is interesting, tweak as you see fit, and build up the religious and cultural narratives of whatever fantasy people you please. Here’s a link: the copyright never got renewed so this whole damn thing is public domain, baby!

For this post I just went and chose at random, but with the way that the Index reduces everything to generically-named components you can easily build a more structured myth by picking an entry you like (weddings, deaths and births are a good place to start) and build out links one by one. I might do that for a second installment. 

A Mythology in 100 Parts

1. Creator is accompanied by a dog (A33.1.1)
2. God as son of 9 giantesses (A112.5)
3. Deity born from skull (A114.3)
4. Twin (or triune) goddesses (A116.2)
5. God with 3/5/6 faces (A123.2.X)
6. Maggots in the mouth of man-eating god (A123.2.2.1)
7. God with 2 joined bodies (A123.1.2)
8. God with 13 eyes (A123.3.1.3)
9. God with 8 heads (A123.4.1.3)
10. God with a stone head (A123.4.2)
11. Goddess of war in shape of a red woman (A125.1.1)
12. God in tiger's skin (A131.5)
13. Bear goddess (A132.5)
14. God's home under tree of life (A151.7.1.1)
15. God uses interpreter to speak to women (A182.3.0.4)
16. God's elephant (A155)
17. Gods covered in red and yellow feathers (A139.9.3)
18. Dwarf god (A134)
19. God carries siblings in a basket on his back (A137.4.1)
20. Goddess appears as coral reef (A139.8.2)
21. Animal elders & the angels of animals (B1 & B1.1)
22. Dragon as modified shellfish (B11.2.1.3)
23. Man-eating mares (B16.1.3.1)
24. Ghormuhas: men's bodies, horses' heads, one leg, cannibals. (B15.7.5)
25. Burrowing swine heat ground (B19.4.1)
26. Sheep with a fiery collar (B19.4.3)
27. Giant swimming raven (B31.3.1)
28. Air-going elephant (B45)
29. Flying crustacean (B48)
30. Deer with one gold and one silver antler (B15.3.2.1)
31. Frog with magic knowledge (B126.1)
32. Animal languages learned from ghosts / spirits (B217.3)
33. Magic dead pig (D1281.1)
34. Clairvoyant tube (D1323.9)
35. Star-deity and drought-demon fight (A255)
36. Angel of the deep (A421.0.1)
37. God of the Squid (A455.1)
38. Goddess of Smith-work (A451.1.1)
39. Water spirits have hearth made of three human skulls (F420.2.5)
40. Abandoned infant lives by eating corpse of murdered father (G25)
41. Witch has 3 giant sons (G206)
42. Witch with iron teeth (G314.2)
43. Witch with 15 tails (G219.8.1)
44. Witch has extraordinary physical strength (G221.3)
45. Moon punishes for breach of tabu (C905.2)
46. Transformation: man to peanut (D222.1)
47. Magic drink causes insanity (D1367.2)
48. Blood of salamander protects against fire (D1382.13)
49. Magic red stone protects from poison (D1383.6)
50. Earth from saint's grave expels demons (D1385.1)
51. Magic sight given to child + magic sight given by dead person (D1821.6 + D1821.8)
52. Rejuvenation by song of pelican (D1889.3)
53. Covenant of friendship (P311.5)
54. Student enters competition with their teacher (P342)
55. Woman disguised as monk enters monastery (P426.3.3)
56. Impregnation by lightning (T528)
57. Lesbians give birth to monsters (T462.1)
58. Hunting is a madness of kings (P12.1)
59. King descends to bottom of sea in glass barrel (P15.5)
60. Princes as smiths (P31.1)
61. 2 brothers become pirates (P251.5.1)
62. Twins freed from mother's rotting corpse (T584.2.1.1)
63. Mother kills husband for murdering their daughter (P211.2)
64. King mourns wife's death so much he becomes a pirate (P27.2)
65. King never touches earth; carried around by slaves (P14.5)
66. Inauguration of king as espousal to goddess (P11.6)
67. Woman paints face to become pregnant (T579.8.2)
68. Child with several mothers (T589.9)
69. Children from a well (T589.6.4)
70. Child born each day for a week (T586.5.2)
71. Marriage by drinking festival (T135.6)
72. Marriage of girl to sword (T117.2)
73. Wife goes to land of dead to procure husband's heart (F81.1.1)
74. Stair to lower world (F94)
75. People of the lower world emerge to drink and dance in the evening (F108.2)
76. Journey to the Land of Women (F112)
77. Journey to Land of the Unborn (F115)
78. Submarine monastery (F133.3)
79. Witch's house at border of otherworld (F147.3)
80. Ogres harnessed to plow (G675)
81. Blood of 5 ogres: yellow, red, white, green, black (G367.1)
82. Devil employed as midwife (G303.9.3.2)
83. Woman requires 30 men (as husbands) (T146.2)
84. Wife hides husband's infidelity from emperor, shelters his mistress (T222)
85. Pot so heavy with ghosts that girl cannot lift it (E499.3)
86. Speaking and bleeding trees; reincarnated persons (E631.0.4)
87. Noah saves a giant on the ark; too big to go inside, has to stay in the rigging (F531.5.9)
88. Stolen animal's meat impossible to cook (Q212.4)
89. Punishment: Imprisonment in white-hot iron house (Q414.2)
90. Princess (queen) compelled to keep an inn (Q481)
91. Abduction by goddess's cat (R13.2.3.1)
92. Captivity in subterranean palace (R41.1.1)
93. Girl hidden in skin of dead mother (R318)
94. Intestines wagered (N2.3.5)
95. Evil spirit harpoons sleepers (F402.1.11.3)
96. Recognition by hole burned in hand when woman removes glove (H56.1)
97. Quest for golden wood for knife handle (H1359.1)
98. Wolf tries in vain to be doctor (J512.5)
99. Beaver and porcupine trick each other (K896.1)
100. Fox disguised as scholar (K1822.2)

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76. What do goblins smell like? What about trolls? Do elves have a particular smell?
Goblin smell can only be described as “funky”. 

Trolls smell like wet earth, musk, and piss (from territory marking)

Elf smell depends on how I am interpreting elves at that moment, and could be either:

• Floral or fragrant wood scents (either magical effect or perfumes)
• Highly muted (because they don’t sweat)
• Normal human body odor

77. What do your cleric's holy symbols look like? Are they needed for turning?
Symbols have no benefit on their own; they’re helpful because they help keep the exorcist focused, but they aren’t required for the process.

The hamsa is your generic all-purpose atropaic symbol; deity-specific symbols will typically be an emblem (think mon or adinkra) incorporating stylized / modified names or titles, iconic items, and their most prominent symbolic concepts.

78. What does the "bare minimum" for you to run a game look like?
2 players, ~2 hours, 1 dice set or a phone app; I can run Last Things Last from memory.

79. What happens at 0 HP in play, can I get a healing potion down their throat?
0 HP means a character is downed (unconscious if they fail a save), so they’ll need to be stabilized within a turn or two before I start calling for death saves. Basically just Mothership rules.

80. What happens when a character dies in your setting?
They're gone: bodily death means that the soul can no longer maintain cohesion. With no breath to sustain it, the fire goes out and the shade will go down into the underworld. It’s not a conscious or individuated entity, but it might linger around for a bit.

Alternatively, if I want to completely upend everything I have, I do something real funky with how souls, planes, and reincarnation work and make an entire foundational magic system out of it.

81. What happens when someone eats dragon meat? Drinks their blood?
It’ll give you powerful dragon magic, start transforming you into a dragon / some kind of horrible hybrid abomination, and puts a target on your back; once you’ve started on the Burning Path, you’ve been upgraded to a meaningful threat by both dragons and other ascendants.

82. What Idea or concept are you "saving" for a future game/campaign?
I have no idea how practical it is (probably not practical at all), but I'd love to try “Delta Green in the Dreamlands using Runequest magic”.
 
83. What is a generous/stingy tip to a porter, stablehand, or potboy in your setting?
Either way it’s a small enough amount that I don’t find tracking it to be fun or meaningful.

84. What is a ruling you regret or wish you would have handled differently?
See #60. I should have hit pause, explained what the immediate consequences would, and then see how they wanted to proceed.

85. What is one food that differs from ours that everyone knows about in your game?
I normally stick to real-world foods tweaked slightly (ex: river-octopus takoyaki) or eaten outside of their presumed cultural context (ex: a king in Generic Fantasy PseudoEurope eating empanadas), but with all the giant bugs in D&D-derived fantasy I have to assume that someone out there has started farming them at scale.

86. What is plate mail in your game? Does armor come with gloves/gauntlets?
Plate armor lives in a weird place in my mind: I’m so used to seeing overdesigned concept-art versions of it, and find it so linked with the class marker of “murderous zealot landlord”, that I don’t really think about it much at all and just kind of go “yeah, it’s like Laios’ kit from Dungeon Meshi” and leave it like that. Not going to get fancy with it unless I’m channeling Elden Ring and / or playing Mythic Bastionland.

87. What is the perfect hex size for the number of features you place/stock?
1 parasang. Not the actual historical measurement, a Caves of Qud parasang, where an unfamiliar unit is used Gene Wolfe style to give the audience a trackable measurement without having to worry about exact detail. Worrying about the exact spatial scale of RPG travel is less important to me than the temporal one: how many days/turns/actions does it take?

88. What method do you use for tracking turns elapsing or hit points depleted?
Frantic scribbling on looseleaf. Or a spin down d20, though I think I've lost mine.

89 What other hobbies do you possess that seep into games, subtly or otherwise?
Look, you're already reading this blog you know there’s going to be linguistics, anthropology, and astronomy deep cuts.

90. What step in the common procedures do you often forget or elide/change?
If it involves exploration turns in dungeons, I am dogshit at it. Maybe I need to just get rid of the explicit time aspect and just treat them as Arbitrary Time Units. Spending ten minutes for an entire party to case a room that often doesn’t have all that much in it just never made sense to me, regardless of its mechanical practicality.

91. What topics or themes are off-limits in your games? How do you communicate this?
I do lines and veils and establish mood / tone before the first session, and make sure that if there is heavier material in the module that people know that going in. In my DG player’s guide, I wrote this up:

“Torture and sexual assault are not going to be encountered “on-screen”; they might be mentioned as prior events either directly or through implication. PCs will often find themselves dealing with the aftermath of horrific events.”

This has, so far, been a fruitful way to thread the needle.

92. What was one major conflict/war that has occurred within recent memory?
I use the Dayr War from MSF as my conflict template, tweaking specific details as needed while keeping the core of:

• Occurred 10~15 years ago
• Wizards were involved
• Was fought outside the region of play (so veterans went out and then came back)

93. What would be the punishment for stealing a loaf of bread? A horse?
A loaf of bread will get you pointed in the direction of the almshouse and community work-crew organizer; a stolen horse will likely net you a fine for replacement cost + lost wages, plus a big black mark on your reputation. Much cheaper to just rent the horse from the public stables down by the post office.

94. What's the deal with those alignment languages in your games?
They’re the liturgical languages of major religious traditions. Should make a post about that.

95. Where does lamp oil come from/how is it made?
Seed oil and animal fat, with specific varieties dependent on your region but ultimately mechanically identical 

For adventurers far from civilization, it’s trickier to procure; your best bet is to hunt a squonk, since you can use both its oily skin secretions and rendered fat and you can sell the surplus when you get back to town.

96. Which die from the typical (or atypical!) polyhedrals is your favorite and why?
I’m a basic bastard and will just say that a nice d20 is a satisfying shape.

97. Who digs those dungeons? Why do they attract so much treasure/danger?
One of my all-time favorite fantasy tropes is the city/town/castle/dungeon/ruins built on top of something old and horrible. Something terrible happened there long ago, but whatever it is and no matter how horrible it is people will build on the site and dig deep to find it. 

98. Who is the most powerful magic user in your setting? The most infamous thief?
Most powerful magic user is a toss-up; after a certain point it just becomes comparing nuclear arsenals. But it’s likely to be either the Grey Witch or the King of Wands in any case.

The most infamous thief is, of course, Arsene Lupin. Or Robin Red-Hood. Or Sinbad the Sailor. Honestly if they're good at being a thief they’re also good at hiding their identity, so there’s a lot of pseudonymous heisting going on.

99 Why are elves immune to ghoul paralysis? How long do they live?
Boring answer is that it's just some weird quirk of how proteins bind or don't bind and how that impacts neuron transmission blah blah blah blah. Elf lifespan is either "normal human", "average old tree", "bristlecone pine", and "fondly remembers mammoths"

100. Why do dwarves and elves have that classic enmity, or do they?
Nah. You might have something like it on a community level, but it’s going to be for normal reasons of why neighboring groups might dislike each other.

That’s for “elves and dwarves are types of humans”, of course; “elves and dwarves are magical beings” has less reason for the enmity IMO, as their habitats don’t really overlap. Elves in the forests, dwarves deep in the earth.

Burgeoning Blogs 3

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51. May I please see a devious trap or dangerous hazard you have created?
A fountain with a shin-deep pool of clear water. 

• [Important item] clearly visible at the bottom of the fountain 
• Starving, translucent ooze detectable only by
• Close inspection (optical anomaly in the water)
• Tossing in a small item (bounces off cell membrane)
• Reaching into the water (triggers an attack).

52. Please share 3 new/distinctive magical spells you or your players have created

• Rite of Perfect Discoverie - A scrying spell that locates an item’s possessor / possessed item if you have the other component present. Requires ritual circle and mirror; mirror displays a path from caster’s present location to target’s present location. Ritual draws attention of Beasts of Many Angles, who will appear in mirror in the peripheral vision of caster; initial response will be curiosity / investigation, further use will set them on the hunt.
• Call upon NIN-SU-GAL – A means to summon and propitiate the Lady of the Great Flesh, derived from the rites of the Lušārātum (“hairy men”). Requires ritual circle, food offering, and some medium of visual communication (television, computer monitor, mural or painting, etc). Encounters will be brief and distressing.
• Blood Clot - Triggers a catastrophic stroke in the target after ~6 seconds of sustained eye contact on failed save. Requires series of hand-signs; mouthing trigger words to maintain focus common but not necessary. Deeply traumatic to witness.

53. Share a puzzle or riddle that has produced a memorable experience for you
I’ve mentioned it in a previous post, but I’m still pleased with how I was able to use the Navajo Code Talker booklet in my Delta Green campaign. 

54. Share some common superstitions practiced by the people of your setting

• It’s good luck to spit over the side of a bridge the first time you cross it.
• The father of the gods’ favorite food is noodles; offering it to guests brings good fortune (and is just being a good host).
• Cats are messengers of the gods (when they feel like it), and so shooing one out of a shrine is extremely bad luck.

55. Show me three brand new monsters you have created for your game!

Daemonophagic Hippopotamus
An otherwise ordinary hippo that has gained a vivid red-and-black coloration from a diet of demons.

Red Fundament Footsolider
A tall, grey-skinned creature in rust-red armor like an arthropod exoskeleton. Communicates with its packmates with a series of mandible clicks and throaty wheezes. Two carry long rifles, one carries a flamethrower (as Cone of Fire)

Meat Pile
An elderly slime, no longer able to flush detritus out of its body; a sludgy mass of dirt, decaying flesh, broken bones. Stinks to high heaven. Leaves a filmy trail on the ground. Effectively immune to damage (unless you can sustain an intense burn). Will slowly pursue the party through the dungeon, squeezing through tight spaces and unseen passages to move between non-adjacent rooms.

56. Summarize your campaign setting in 2d20 words or Less
2d20 = 4 (3,1)
Things I personally like.

57. Talk about your favorite Blog/Creator for a little bit! Give them some compliments!
Arnold Kemp is the reason I started my blog, and he’s the reason I got involved on G+ back when the party was going strong. A new post on Goblin Punch is a drop-everything-and-read-it moment, and has been for over a decade.

58. Tell me about a book or movie that really influenced you in terms of these games!
It feels like cheating to say Lord of the Rings, but I’ll say Lord of the Rings. Specifically in the field of orcs: I think Tolkien kinda fell into a perfect storm scenario where he paired an extremely potent core idea with pretty dodgy execution, and D&D copying the latter without the former has led to an entire genre ecosystem of compounding issues over 50 years. But all those compounding issues fall into the “shit makes for good fertilizer" category for me, and I like the challenge that they present to me as a writer; it’d be easy to just remove orcs, but I  find it more rewarding as a writer to go “okay, here’s what Tolkien was aiming for, here’s the issues, can I thread this needle?”

Considering I have like, 7 alternate versions of orcs cooked up at time of writing, the answer is “well, at least it's a productive line of inquiry if nothing else.”
 
59. Tell me about a thing you've included "just for you" without regard to the players
Valeria (positively) described Unicorn Meat as  “VaatiVidya bait” and that’s one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten. I fill basically everything I write with references and connections and allusions to other things, regardless of whether or not people will ever find them (though I always love it when they do). 

The best example for Unicorn Meat isn’t particularly hidden, but it’s also not directly stated in the text: if the players visit Stitches at the med hut, they’ll be told about a bunch of sci-fi paperbacks on one of her shelves. If they then go to White-Eyes’ room they’ll find more books, and that’s the only other place on the farm where they show up - which even if the players forgot the books in the med hut or never visited Stitches, the fact that White-Eyes is blind should tip them off that someone’s been visiting her (and presumably reading to her, which is a clue to the nature of the relationship).

60. Tell me about a time your players surprised you or ruined your prep/plans!
When running Kidnap the Archpriest years ago, one of my players (new to RPGs at the time) barreled into the gatehouse immediately and the alarm was raised right then and there. I didn’t really have enough experience or wherewithal in the moment to roll with that punch. The entire session basically collapsed right there.

61. Tell me about the moon(s) in the sky. What are some beliefs associated with 'em?

• There’s a demon that lives on the moon that curses women with menstruation as revenge for some past heroine or goddess getting one over on them.
• There used to be seven moons, but the dragon Bakunawa ate six of them before being defeated by the gods.
• Wizards faked the moon landing, which then spurred other wizards to land on it for real due to the one-upmanship inherent in academic vendettas.
• The moon is hollow, and Hell is located inside it.
• The moon is inhabited by bat-winged men who live in sapphire palaces.
• The moon is the corpse of Theia, the earth goddess’ twin sister
• The moon divorced the ocean and married the sun; the ocean still pines for her.
• The moon is the severed head of Ganda, the first giant.

62. What "something" wouldn't be in your game if it weren't for the players?
I don’t have any good examples off the dome, though I maintain a “if the player wants something in the game, put it in (or the closest available analogue)” policy.

63. What are 10 new things that you put on your equipment lists for purchase?
I think that shopping in rpgs is by and large a waste of time that should be abolished. If players want something not on the list they can tell me “hey I would like to buy X” and we can go from there. 

64. What are 6 things one might encounter on the way to the nearest dungeon?

1. Makeshift graves of some unlucky delvers, none more than a year or two old. One has recently been disrupted by a wild animal or monster.
2. A peddler of trinkets, tokens, relics, charms, patent medicines, assorted esoteric knick-knacks, and anything else that might be of interest to a delver looking for a bit of extra spiritual protection.
3. The corpse of some alien entity of the chaotic true depths; it managed to reach the surface, but died from the spiritual influence of the sun before it could cover two-hundred paces. Neither scavengers nor decomposers will touch it.
4. A goblin community, packing up camp and preparing to move onward now that they’ve been driven out from their home in the dungeon by another faction
5. Abandoned excavation equipment from a failed attempt to quarry out the structure.
6. Heads on stakes, left as a warning.

65. What are a few good tracks/traces for the most commonly encountered foes?

• Goblins leave graffiti everywhere
• Troll piss stinks to high heaven and they mark their territory with it
• Ghouls leave behind the cracked-open bones of their meals
• Orcs have distinct footprints (hobnailed boots with steel toes and rubberized treads)
• Undead only smell of rot if they’ve been active for a while or if it was a slapdash job
• Deep Ones naturally smell strongly of salt and fish
• Some varieties of demon alter art and text by presence alone

66. What are five frivolous things adventurers can spend their gold on?

1. Collectible figurines of popular characters
2. Painstakingly-constructed dwarvish handicrafts
3. Mayfly high fashion that falls apart as soon as it's taken off 
4. A box that you put money into and get nothing out of. Maybe one day it’ll work…
5. Hand-painted custom-order terro cards.

67. What are four legendary treasures one might search for in your game?

1. The Four Tiger Sword - A blade forged in the hour, day, month, and year of the Tiger. Extremely effective against spiritual foes, but purposefully left unsharpened for symbolic reasons.
2. The Claw - A palm-sized, teardrop-shaped sapphire reputed to have miraculous healing qualities. Belonged to an ancient prophet, currently in possession of migratory monastic order. Identified by a crescent-shaped flaw near its center.
3. The Book of Ingenious Devices - A book outlining the construction and maintenance of a wide variety of mechanical tools and devices, both mundane and magical.
4. Stopsvalinn - Heirloom buckler of a now-dissolved noble family; a rusted red octagon with blocky white symbols in an unknown script.

(Magical items in games are a field where I say less originality is better: they’re supposed to stand out and be important, recognizability or real-world antecedent can help emphasize that if used appropriately)

68. What are some common long-distance communication methods in your world?

• Postal service (letters & packages; variable speed)
• Troll stones (real-time voice; all users tormented by trolls providing live commentary)
• The Murder of All Crows (letters & voice messages; fast; pay in carrion or sweetmeats)
• Scrying (real-time voice & image; wizard-gated)

69. What are some deadly diseases/awful afflictions one might unfortunately catch?
You know, this is something I have never really contemplated before. Probably because “disease that’s interesting in an RPG” overlaps with “weird magical curse” in my head. Mundane diseases in RPGs are just mundane diseases and I don’t think “your character is feverish and shitting themselves and has to sit out this session” has much of a function in a game except for the (very useful) excuse for a missing player.

Anyway, Red Death and Black Fever would be my go-tos for in-universe historical epidemics, and then if I wanted to hit players with something specific I would probably just search the SCP wiki by tag and pick some highlights.

70. What are some interesting herbs/plants one might find foraging?
I’ve got a copy of Fungi of the Far Realms that I've never been able to use, so probably something from that.

71. What are some of your favorite resources or tools you use in your games?
Clocks are great, love a good clock. You can use ‘em to track damn near anything.

72. What are some unusual drugs/intoxicants in your setting?
I don't have a proper list, so I'd probably just crack open Esoteric Enterprises and use that. But liao is definitely an option: see through time and space, attract Hounds of Tindalos, all the hits. 

73. What are the best snacks you've found that work during a game?
I don’t have a standout best, but the worst would be the time in college when I was going to run a game, we all ordered Chinese food beforehand, and then I spent most of the evening in the bathroom choking on an insufficiently-chewed piece of General Tso’s chicken.

74. What could I bring to a game that would bribe the referee?
I don’t take bribes but I do appreciate offerings of food, previous entry notwithstanding.

75. What degree of "kitchen sink" or "gonzo" is acceptable in your games?
I like my settings to be pretty weird (understatement of the year) mashups of inspirations, but while they certainly qualify for both categories I don’t know if I’d use those terms myself. I’m all about the connective tissue that forms between elements of the setting, and kitchen sink / gonzo usually feel to me like all the weird stuff is just kind of free-floating around.

There’s bound to be a crashed spaceship somewhere, but it’s also going to be more on the hard-science side of the spectrum vs flying saucer, is what I’m trying to get at here.

Burgeoning Blogs 2

 Let's keep this ball rolling.

< Part 1

> Part 3

> Part 4  

26. How could I go about acquiring a gryphon mount? 
Either raise one from an egg (not easy) or impress one with a feat of valor (also not easy, but typically faster) - the latter will usually involve killing a specific griffin's enemy or rival (often a manticore, as they fill similar predatory niches)

27. How difficult is it to be brought back from the dead? Is such a thing even possible? 
Impossible: attempts to maintain the soul’s cohesion after bodily death is the territory of mad wizards. Shades can be summoned up pretty easily, but that’s because they’re one component of the soul and aren’t conscious entities. 

28. How do you deal with any jitters or nerves before running a game? 
I’m usually chomping at the bit before a game, rather than jittery. The difficulty is getting me into the starting position.

29. How do you determine if a character can successfully swim in your games? 
I just presume that they can, unless given reason to believe otherwise (they’re a dwarf, they’re made of stone, they’re from a desert, the player arbitrarily decides their character can’t swim), in which case I will ask the player.

30. How do you determine the weather for the day or season in your game? 
I have never actually done this, so probably with a hex flower or random table or just like, a Farmer’s Almanac from the 1800s or something.

31. How do you feel about writing directly in RPG books? Forbidden or useful? 
I don’t do it for the same reason I don’t write in the margins of normal books - I rewrite or correct things often enough that it will just turn into a mess of crossouts and eraser burns.

32. How do you handle a shy/quiet player? What about a spotlight hungry one? 
Both of these are tied up in the same general idea, which is making sure to cycle through my players with some leading questions re: what their character is doing or feeling. 

33. How do you make particularly efficient weapons stand out from inefficient ones?
Low-quality weapons have a higher chance of breaking & doing less damage; high quality ones will have a higher minimum damage or better chance to hit.

34. How do you roll dice? In the open, behind a screen, let the players roll? 
In the open, players make their own rolls. I do a lot of DMing while standing so a screen is usually of limited use to me.

35. How do your players deal with losing a character? How do you get ’em back in play? 
If they die early enough in the game that they’d be sitting around for a while, I’ll hand them a hireling, already-introduced NPC, or just a rando who would make even a bit of sense for the party to run into. They can then decide if they want to keep playing as that character or roll up a new one for the next session. If I really need to keep them in, they can be the ghost of their PC.

36. How has access to magic influenced technology in your setting? 
I tend to say that the existence of magic allows for anachronistic jumps forward in scientific fields, with sanitation, medicine, food production and astronomy being the big ticket items. Like instead of turning magic into a sub-field of science, magic is a tool to help you do science. An advantage to this is that I can keep exactly what the magic is vague for ease-of-use and narrative convenience while still keeping the societal effects. Some examples:

• Field-specific craft-magic means that everything's just a bit higher quality than it would be in reality. Items last longer and work better, and craftsmen are able to do more with less.
• Ex. If I give glassmakers are bit of vaguely-defined trade magic, I can say that made the development of lenses just a touch easier which allows me to say that microscopes and telescopes show up earlier (in-universe equivalent of the Classical period, for ease of player reference) and I can skip right over geocentrism and humorism.
• If demons exist, people will have to develop a reliable means of diagnosing possessions, which I can lead to a earlier conceptualization of mental illness.

This is, if I think about it for any time at all, a very idiosyncratic approach to magic (or at least one I don't recall seeing anywhere besides like, the occasional tumblr post) and I don’t actually think it’s based on any specific influence. I just think real-life space science is cool and want to have characters know about it.

37. How have video games/other media influenced the way you approach these games? 
Fear and Hunger’s tightly woven and multiple-solution dungeon/world design is a thing of beauty and very worth emulating, especially how open-ended and complex it manages to be without bogging down the player in verbs and tools. It’s something I had tried to do in Unicorn Meat, but of course I wrote that before I knew about or played Fear and Hunger. 

38. How long does it take to have a custom set of armor made? A weapon? 
1-4 downtimes, depending on what you’re asking for.

39. How long is your average session? Have they ever gone longer than expected? Why? 
Usually 2-3 hours. If they go longer it’s usually because there’s only a little left and it’s less hassle than scheduling a second session.

40. How much are lifestyle expenses for your PCs "between adventures?" 
I’ve never considered this a particularly interesting thing to track;  I greatly prefer Delta Green’s downtime actions.

41 How much time do you spend preparing between games? What's that look like? 
A lot of bullet points and boxes connected with arrows, doesn’t matter if it’s a premade module or something I made. Time spent is dependent on how much text I need to compile and how much compiling I need to do to make it usable.

42. How were you Introduced to these games? Share your history with them! 
I saw some 3e books at Borders in ye olden days, but didn’t really play them until I got to college and took up an offer from someone in the fantasy/sci-fi book club. I know I had been collecting the odd free pdf before then, but I didn’t get around to playing until later.

43. How would a player go about brewing their own potion or making a scroll? 
They’d need the recipe / magical formula they want to use, and then downtime action(s) to do it.

44. How would you describe a 60' x 60' square room with 4 cardinal doors to the players? 
Material, temperature, smell, contents, art on walls / ceiling / floor, sound (in-room and from adjacent rooms).

45. How would you handle a party wanting to start a business or enterprise? 
I background it to one of two rolls made during downtime: how is the business doing, and has anything noteworthy happened?

46. Is it possible to play as something unusual in your setting? A dragon, balrog, minotaur? 
I love me a Star Wars cantina, but I try to be cognizant of the fact that it’s extremely easy to make a setting dull and samey by going for quantity over quality. Part of my method for avoiding this is  just saying “there’s a lot of variety you can get from ‘humans only’ if you interpret monopods as humans”; the other part is to try and keep the special options rooted in place and context, instead of treating them like another variety of human.

Example: if you want to play a minotaur, cool! You’re going to be one of the White Bull’s thousand sons. You’re immortal, everyone in the world knows what happened to your mother, all your brothers hate you (feeling’s mutual), and your father is an eldritch abomination locked inside a maze at the bottom of some Atlantean ruins.

D&D has a habit of genericizing and sterilizing mythic monsters and that’s a large part of why using them as the quote unquote exotic player options always strikes me as a failure of imagination. Like you’re stripping out the core of the monster, there goes your main avenue of reinterpretation.

47. Is magic innate or something that can be learned by anyone? Why? 
I roll with “learned by anyone” as the default, with innate magic generally caused by external influences (you got too close to a Powerful Magical Thing, usually). It’s never going to be a strictly heritable feature, because I fucking hate the fantasy genre’s obsession with magic eugenics. Fuck right off the edge of my dick with that shit, how about you try ripping off someone who isn’t Queen Terf of Wet Island for a change, Jesus Christ. (Yes I know the trope is older than that but most modern fantasy authors aren't ripping off particularly far back sources, you know?)

48. Is there a particular system or game that you are excited to run or play? Tell me about it! 
Before life got in the way, there were plans for Layla to run Mythic Bastionland for myself and a couple other friends. Was really looking forward to that; was the first time Into the Odd mechanics really clicked for me - amazing what changing the wording from “hit points” to “guard” can do. I was going to be the Emerald Knight, the most normal of the band,

49. Is there some kind of banking system/safe storage of treasure in your setting? 
If you’re friends with the moldywarps (and you should be, they’re cute little mole-people), they’ll gladly hold on to your valuables for you. It’s not really a bank, though, more just a favor for a friend: you aren’t insured, you accrue no interest, and sometimes the moldywarps will exchange your item for something “just as good” (according to their own non- monetary standards)

50. Let me hear about your fave character/NPC from a game! What made 'em special? 
Gotta be Ayo my drunken BEEFSTRONK tiefling monk. Longest-running character I’ve ever had.
 

Burgeoning Blogs 1

The ever-incredible ktrey over at d4Caltrops had a recent 1d100 table of potential blogpost topics: in my infinite wisdom I am going to shotgun the gamut and answer every single one of them. Split up into four posts of 25 each for my own sanity.

> Part 2

> Part 3

> Part 4 

1. Are phones/devices permitted at your table? How do you handle distractions?
I don’t have a rule against it. If people are really getting distracted, I'll throw them one of the softball “how does your character do X?” prompts to get them back in.


2. Are spellcasters rare? Common? How do "normal" people feel about them? 
Spells like "snap your fingers and light a match", "fix a clean break in a broken object" and "find the lost object that you swear you just set down" are an everyday part of life. Cunning men / women, witches, spirit mediums and other low-power practitioners are found basically everywhere, and are highly valued in their communities.

Mid-power practitioners (roughly where a magic-specialist PC would be) are not uncommon, and attitudes are more ambivalent. A letter of introduction from an initiatory society won’t smooth over everything, but it will help a traveling mage.

High-power practitioners (traditional wizards with the hat and tower & so on) are rare and considered extremely dangerous (for many well-attested reasons).


3. Are there secret societies or factions hiding in your world? Tell me about one!
I am habitually incapable of resisting cheeky references to SCP deep lore that no one else will get, regardless of what game I am running, though the actual group of interest I use is context-dependent. The most likely ones will be the occult historical factions (Daevites, Ortothans, Nalkans, and Mekhanists) appearing as mystery religions, since they lend themselves extremely well to evoking vast secrets lost to time.


4. Are there any interesting holidays/festivals in your world? 
One off the dome: an isolated village whose midsummer festival entails a giant red and white orb descends from the sky and gives each inhabitant an amorphous, blobby tie-die sculpture sort of thing with no apparent purpose or design. Then the orb leaves, the sculptures are installed next to the family shrine, and next year they are returned to the orb in exchange for new sculptures.

No one knows why this happens.


5. Are there any recurring jokes or humorous call-backs that occur in your games? 
At some point, there will be a skull with the name DENNIS carved into its forehead.


6. Are there constellations in your setting? Can you describe four of them? 
It's never come up, but if I had to do it on the fly I would rename existing constellations and probably mix different traditions together while doing it. Proper names would be swapped out but the titles would probably stay the same or be similar i.e. Taurus would be the Bison or the Bonnacon, the Dippers would be the Raccoon Brothers, Orion would be the Amazon, etc.

7. Are you working on your own system? What makes it stand out from others? 
My great open secret is that I generally don’t put high value on rulesets as a whole, and tend to treat them as modular assortments of mechanics (sorted by broad genus) that can be tweaked and recombined as needed.

Which is to say I have tried making my own system, but found no reason to see those projects through when I can just use what other people have made.


8. Can one buy magic items in your setting? Where would one go about doing this? 
There are two kinds of magical item, far as I'm concerned: those that inherently have magical properties (phoenix feathers, bonnacon turds, basilisk eyes, etc) and those that have been imbued with magical properties intentionally by a practitioner. Both can be bought, though the former is much easier to acquire than the latter since you can just go on down to the shop and pick up some mandrake root; to get a bespoke enchantment you need to find someone willing and able to do the enchantment, and then they'll need time and resources to make it happen.


9. Describe 4 things that qualify for deity disfavor and cause clerics to lose powers
In increasing order of severity (exact likelihood and specifics depend on the deity):

1. Violation of ritual praxis by accident or ignorance
• If you don't know or flub up the proper rites but are doing your honest best, most popular gods will let it slide. 
2. Minor violations of ethical praxis
• Overlooking minor sins is basically required in order to maintain a human priesthood, though all gods will get fed up with it eventually if left unaddressed for too long.
3. Ritual impurity 
• This will often be an instant disfavor, though will usually only last until the follower has ritually purified themselves; the more charitable gods will make exceptions for emergency situations (ex. violating dietary prohibitions under duress in order to save someone's life)
4. Knowing violation of ritual praxis / desecration of sacred space
•  Getting sloppy with rites can be tolerated to a (usually very small extent), but deliberate transgression is going to have pretty immediate consequences. 
5. Extreme violations of praxis or sacred space
•  This is the part of the gradient where violators are going to get their asses cursed or smote.
6. Uncategorized Fucking Around
•  Circumstances where the only natural outcome is Finding Out.

10. Describe a few pieces of expensive jewelry one might find in a dragon's hoard.

1. Jade and silver torc of two entwined serpents  from the 18th Dynasty of Thuria
2. Gold and lapis lazuli headdress of an exorcist-priestess of Nan-Sul-Gara
3. Amber nose stud with preserved insect of unknown provenance unknown
4. Marble touch-sculpture of the blind and bat-like Venusians; is actually biting political satire
5. Amulet containing the left navigular bone of Saint Jomo the Mortitian.
6. An electrum medallion; it menaces with spikes of obsidian; it is engraved with the image of an elephant and a dwarf in electrum: the elephant is striking down the dwarf; the elephant is on fire; the dwarf is screaming.

11. Describe a near death situation or TPK that you've been a part of at the table
The one time I played Mutant Year Zero (right before covid kicked off), the entire party died from radiation poisoning two hexes away from home because we didn’t have a scout. Mistakes were made.


12. Describe an occasion where a die roll or randomizer had everyone surprised! 
It’s been long enough since I’ve played regularly that I don’t have any good examples on hand.


13. Describe one big "mover and shaker" or local lord/lady in your world. 
I’ve yet to settle on a name for her, but there’s a drow / lilu / kin-yani diplomat-sorceress who’s one of those 4D plate-spinner types. She’s the overseer for a major (but relatively new) trade relationship between the surface and the subterrene, and has acquired an impressive number of enemies from both sides. A woman with a lot of use for deniable assets.


14. Do all dwarfs have beards or only certain ones? Why? 
Not all of them, but they’re common for both sexes (as is body hair in general), and female dwarves without beards will often grow out their sideburns.


15. Do you do any "funny voices" or accents when portraying? If so, what are they? 
Usually only for comedic characters, which usually boil down to “bloviating wizard”, “Eeyore”, and “goblin”.


16. Do you have any stories from games that your players can't stop talking about? 
Since I don't really have consistent groups I don't have many player stories, but I have plenty of Gm stories; the con game of Dead Planet I ran a couple years ago remains a highlight, when the players managed to open up the Gaunt hive in the Red Tower barracks without any casualties by tossing in a homemade gas bomb and welding the door shut as the player in maggot armor held it in place. Weird to recount a story of players committing war crimes as entertainment, but the clever thinking on their feet was just so good.


17. Do you take breaks during a game? Are they on a schedule or ad hoc? 
Ad hoc, usually around the mid-point and hour / hour and a half in.


18. Do you use "critical hits" or "fumbles" in your games? What have they added? 
The real benefit for a crit of either variety is that they provide a great opportunity for you to ask a player “all right, how does that play out?” They’re a tool for engagement.


19. Do you use music at the table? If so, what are some examples? If not then why? 
I’ve done it a couple times in the past (Waaaaaaaaaay back when I ran Deep Carbon Observatory, I used Elegiac for going upriver and Flutter Fly for the dueling wizard encounter), but I’ve found it low-benefit to high-hassle on the whole.


20. Does alignment ever change, what kind of things would lead to that? 
Changing either your political or spiritual alliance, depending on how I am interpreting alignment at that given moment.


21. Draw or describe a treasure map your players might discover in play 
A  grid of street patterns scribbled on the back of a receipt: the only indication of actual locations are a circled X and a handful of very loose interpretations of fast food logos.


22. Have you ever fudged die rolls? Do you have strong feelings about the concept? 
I’m most likely to fudge enemy health rather than rolls; if the players have the situation under control / it’s starting to get boring, I’ll just decide 1-3 more hits will do it in if it’s not going to surrender or run off.


23. How are skeletons made? Ghouls? Why haven't wraiths/vampires taken over? 
Skeletons are made by binding a minor spirit to a bunch of bones. They can follow some basic commands, and work a bit better when the spirit is the shade of an appropriate species (i.e. the shades of dead humans are best for a human skeleton, though the skeleton and shade don’t have to be from the same person.

The original ghouls were a species of entelodont that got imprinted in a specific shoggoth gene line, and emerge in the modern day as the result of a prion disease that causes all sorts of epigenetic / retroviral fuckery when a body containing dormant imprinted cells is cannibalized.

Ghosts and undead exist in their own ecosystems with checks and balances via predator-prey relationships. Vampires are something of the equivalent of a tiger - solitary predators with very large territories. Either that or horrible tick monsters.


24. How big does a dungeon have to be to qualify for the "mega" appellation? 
Big enough that the campaign setting doesn’t exist concretely outside of it: the dungeon is the setting.


25. How common are adventurers? How are they treated generally by normal folk?
Adventurers are migrant workers, so the locals’ opinions on them will vary a lot according to the present economic situation and assorted intersections of race and class. They go where the (monster hunting) work is, and so will usually make seasonal rounds (often as part of a circus) and use the winter for rest and recovery.

50 Things You Heard Online About Aklo

One would be hard-pressed to find a language more beset by crankery than Aklo. For well over a century it has been the cornerstone of an entire subgenre of bullshit, and the forecast shows no signs of letting up. TikTok, YouTube and Instagram are flooded with claims that it:

1. Is the original human language
2. Confirms hard Sapir-Worf
3. Contains no word for love
4. Grants its speakers magical powers
5. Was inherited from aliens
6. Was inherited from angels
7. Was inherited from demons
8. Was inherited from neanderthals
9. Is a memetic virus from space
10. Is Proto-Indo-European
11. Is Proto-Dene-Yeneseian
12. Is Proto-Nostratic
13. Is Proto-Dene-Sinitic-Caucasian
14. Was spoken by dwarflike pre-Celtic inhabitants of Europe 
15. Was spoken by pre-Christian witch-cults
16. Was spoken in Atlantis and / or Lemuria and / or Mu
17. Was spoken prior to the Tower of Babel
18. Was invented by the Soviet Union in order to destabilize the United States
19. Was invented by the Nazis in order to speak to esoteric Hyperborean intelligences
20. Was invented by the child-eating secret societies of the English aristocratic elite
21. Was invented by the United States in order to destabilize the Soviet Union
22. Was invented by Yakub so white people could conspire in secret
23. Was invented by linguists to perpetuate the hoax of Proto-Indo-European
24. Was invented by John Dee
25. Was invented by Noam Chomsky
26. Was invented by the Freemasons
27. Was invented by the Jesuits
28. Was invented by medieval kabbalists
29. Was invented by the United Nations
30. Has grammatical features found in no natural human language
31. Has no numbers
32. Doesn’t permit recursion
33. Violates linguistic universals
34. Isn’t truly pronounceable by humans
35. Is completely without phonemic vowels
36. Is the original language of the Necronomicon
37. Is the language of the Voynich Manuscript
38. Is instinctively understood by children deprived of language
39. Can only be properly translated by AI
40. Is an AI-generated hoax
41. Was spoken by at least two of the 9/11 hijackers
42. Is actually bastardized Sanskrit
43. Is actually bastardized Hungarian
44. Is actually bastardized Basque
45. Is the only oligosynthetic natural language
46. Features no grammatical or semantic ambiguity
47. Can be translated into any language with no loss of meaning
48. Was spoken by God to create the universe
49. Contains a word that will end the world if read aloud
50. Is an elaborate worldbuilding project that got out of hand.

Cursory review of even moderately-reliable sources indicates few to none of these claims has even minimal backing in mainstream linguistics.

100 More Facts About Mother Stole Fire

 Sequel to a post I wrote nearly four years ago on the dot. Been away for far too long.

1. There are seven dogs in the world whose loyalty is so great that death will not claim them. They remain by the graves of their companions, aged but immortal. The eldest of these is a red wolf who, judging by the grave goods found within the cave, has kept his watch for nearly 45,000 years.
2. Lilu cuisine has a culinary tradition of extremely flavorful food in very small portions, born of having to make do with very little.
3. The oldest living mortal being in the world is a tree named Great Tuung, estimated by wizards to be 2.9 million years old. Several other similarly ancient trees are known - Pando, Old Jikko, and Kalavay have all reached a million years.
4. Hespermontane theater loves stock characters and audience interaction. There's a very porous fourth wall and a lot of improvisation involved (since established characters have established behaviors, riffing on those traits is a necessity to keep the audience interested).
5. One of the greatest honors for a storyteller is the adoption of one of their creations into the wider stable of popular stock characters. Sometimes the character will have their creator's family name appended to their own.
6. Abolitionism was not unheard of in the Second Empire, but its supporters never grew beyond controlled opposition in the senate. Some slight restrictions might get passed every few years, enough to mollify them with a functionally-identical status quo.
7. Wheelchair-bound Goa is the patron god of those with physical and mental disabilities, as well as Tubalkhan’s nephew and one of his workshop assistants. “Give a man what aid he needs, hand him his tools, and let him work as he knows best” goes the saying.
8. The proper name for the third gender in the Longhouse Culture literally translates to “they are always running back and forth” - a reference to their original social function as go-betweens for the men and women’s lodges.
9. A common Belt story: A ship is hit by a sudden storm of such intensity that the weatherworker cannot prevent the ship from sinking. But they are able to weave a spell of wave-marching, and the crew proceeds to walk to the nearest island by its power. While clearly exaggerated into folktale (the distance walked, power of the spell, and number of crew are well outside of reality), there is precedent for fishermen whose canoes capsize making their way home by this method. "If the ship sinks, we will walk to shore!" is a common refrain of the 'Belter Spirit'.
10. As there is little economic impetus for sex work in the Hespermont, pornotekton is more accurately treated as a religious vocation
11. The four most renowned of Tubalkhan's named hammers are Thunderer, Ringing Bell, Iron-Shaper, and Chain-Breaker.
12. Lady Rust is the third sister of the Black and White Queens of Tanniclen; she departed for Pelai during the War and hasn’t been seen on this side of the ocean since. Her sisters don’t talk about her and she’s been dropped from the wizards’ historical records, so it’s fair to presume that the parting was on bad terms.
13. The following historical and pseudohistorical personages exist in MSF with only minor alterations of name and circumstance: Boudicca, Hubaba, Zheng Yi Sao / Ching Shih, Gilgamesh & Enkidu, Enheduana, John Brown, Benjamin Lay, Adolphe Sax, Fred Rogers, Emperor Norton.
14. To "throw the book" at someone means to solve a problem, usually one caused by an officious and equivocating person, through unexpectedly direct means; the phrase originates in a popular Pelaian folktale of a cruel magistrate undone by the hero simply beaning him in the head with a law codex hard enough to knock him out.
15. The city of Qhauya hosts a yearly celebration of the ousting of the wizard-king Bahg, wherein young men dressed as the tyrant are released from the cathedral after morning services to be chased down and hauled back by the townsfolk. The last contestant to be returned gets to open the ceremony the following year, and is given Bahg’s actual (if disenchanted) hat as a trophy until then.
16. A Hespermontane meal: rice and beans with corn and greens, smoked cavy, and a pumpkin-based chili sauce.
17. Municipal gadugi (volunteer collective work teams) are the backbone of Hespermont communities; they’re responsible for trash pickup, snow removal, public space maintenance, community events, festival preparation, and so on.
18. The guilt that comes with addiction is prime feeding ground for demons; treatment entails robust ritual support from the community and focused support from friends and family.
19. The many small island and fleet nations of the Belt are tied together by a complex and longstanding series of treaties and agreements. If a party violates these agreements and oversteps what is considered acceptable hubris, it is now one’s appointed duty to invoke the Trickster Wind and divest them of their wealth; this invocation of swashbuckling piracy as spiritual practice Is the driving counterforce to historical invasions of the Belt by continental powers, and the source of the invaders' repeated failures.
20. In Hespermontane languages, "our ancestors" is always used in the inclusive first person, regardless of where the speaker or audience is from.
21. A prayer to Tubalkhan: "Praise to you, Father of All Peoples, for you teach men and women to make things well."
22. "tok-tok" is a filler particle marking a pause in speech to collect one’s thoughts. An onomatopoeia for knocking a smoking pipe against a wooden block to remove the ashes, originating with ceremonial tobacco during lodge meetings. May also be used as a nonspecific measurement of time.
23. Neckties are only really fashionable in Dis, as the image of wearing a noose as a symbol of one's employment is considered a non-starter outside of Hell.
24. A common insult accusing the target of being an unskilled or inconsiderate lover is derived from the name of a mythic hero notorious for declining an Amazon war-queen's flirtations out of fear of emasculation, and has thus become synonymous with cowardice and poor moral character.
25. Preserved corpses are prime targets for malicious spirits, and so there is a common cross-cultural taboo against embalming or mummifying the dead. The body must be returned to the earth through burial or cremation. 
26. Cheap clay vessels are often stamped with “shatter, and return to the earth".
27. The association of cats and witchcraft goes all the way back to Hecate, who is commonly portrayed alongside the nekomata triad of Pangur Ban, Cait Si, and Greymaulkin.
28. Parliament of Birds vs. Magnaclowder is still taught in the legal schools of the Dragon Republics as one of the Five Landmark Cases. While not a full cessation of hostilities, the final ruling of the nine-year-long suit does severely limit the number of birds any given cat might catch per year.
29. The largest heist in modern history involved the theft of 941 tomes from the private library of the wizard Thanagar the Illuminated. The culprits were never identified and the local government declined to investigate, claiming that since the theft took place on the wizard’s property it was outside their jurisdiction. Facsimile copies of the stolen texts, supposedly derived from “newly discovered original manuscripts” began public library circulation the following year.
30. Red Heron is the largest of the  “in-between” / open clans (those that may be joined without marriage or an internal recommendation); the bulk of its members are migrant workers, immigrants, and those who have for whatever reason left their home clans.
31. Competitive pepper eating is a common display of machismo / nonviolent way to settle disputes in the Belt.
32. Nut allergies are rare, thanks to common use of peanut / tree nut paste in baby food.
33. The alchemical quest to turn lead into gold is not undertaken to produce gold, but to destroy lead. Even in distant antiquity it was known as a worthless and dangerous metal, and in several ancient law codes the knowing usage of lead is classified as centumicide - the legal equivalent to the murder of 100 men.
34. Alchemist’s Gold: a dull, mottled, copper-colored metal that retains the softness and low melting point of lead while losing its toxic interactions with living bodies. It’s useful in nearly all the ways gold is useful, though generally considered ugly. Metalworkers specializing in it are called dunsmiths.
35. Always knock before going to the bathroom at night; there might be an akaname in there, and you wouldn’t want to startle them. Scum lickers might be gross, but they’re ecologically important!
36. Communities will sometimes string the year’s weddings together during the spring or summer and stretch out the collective celebration for days.
37. Spells to aid with sleep compose one of the oldest and most common schools of magic. While nearly all of the traditions began as lullabies for infants and small children, they have diversified radically in the ages since and variants exist for the elderly, couples, oneself, the sick and the dying, and so on. The nonsense words used by many of these songs are occasionally believed to be the remnants of archaic languages by scholars who get a kick out of making non-falsifiable claims.
38. The Maid was once asked what she would do after the War. She responded that she would return to the woods behind her family’s farm, find a fallen tree to sit upon, and listen to the birds and insects for a while.
39. Violence is considered wholly against Tubalkhan’s nature. Even in those stories where he participates in a battle against demons, he’ll be depicted as supporting the other gods, overseeing evacuations, protecting mortals, or aiding the wounded.
40. Two popular saints: Ndoni, patron of lost objects and the people who have lost them; Damhnait, patroness of the mentally ill.
41. Monopods are found on a few small islands in the Belt. These sagani are not fond of company, and hide their homes through illusion, weather magic, or thought-clouding.
42. In antiquity, it was believed that the Astomi tribe from the mountains south of Janashkut could live on smells alone. This has never been true, but they have cultivated myrrh trees for as long as they appear in the historical record.
43. Tomás and Tama are extremely popular railway gods, acting as the twin patrons of engineers and stationmasters, respectively.
44. Regardless of region, buildings are immaculately designed for temperature control according to the needs of the local climate. It’s just good architecture.
45. Hippopotami can and will fight, kill, and eat demons. Those that do so regularly gain a pronounced red and black coloration.
46. The city of Gran Laguna, casino-ridden den of sin and vice, is under the de-facto control of the cetacean mob and its kingpin, the  Dauphin. He’s got city government eating right out of his flipper, so take care not to stick your snout where it doesn’t belong when you head down to the marina for a day at the races.
47. Some popular games: chess, hanafuda, tarocchini, tafl, rummy, kōnane, Wizard’s Hand.
48. Lacrosse was used as a way of avoiding conflict in the old days; it would allow the war societies of the opposing tribes to blow off steam while their councils met to hash out the diplomacy while the matches went on.
49. Giant pandas exist, though not in the way you think. Their bumbling, helpless exterior hides one of the most cunning and vicious ambush predators in the known world. The original species is long extinct, and now only the parasitic mimic remains.
50. Red pandas, on the other hand, are clever little bastards much more like their bandit-masked cousins. 
51. Chocolate is predominantly consumed as a sweetened or spiced beverage; its candy form is a luxury.
52. Though the name and exact form differs, Pen and Tam can (and do) go out for pizza and ice cream; the former is any kind of toasted flatbread with toppings, the latter is typically eaten mixed with nuts, fruit, and spices.
53. Hespermontane sign language (“hand-speaking”) originated as an inter-tribal auxiliary language and has been used as the default communication for deaf persons since antiquity. Children are taught it as part of their schooling, and a modified form is used for human-elephant communication. 
54. Everyone knows that lions don’t lick their young into shape (only the shagga-cat does that), but this didn’t stop one philosopher from trying to document the process and getting mauled to death for his trouble.
55. The omnipresence of minor mending spells means that clothing and household objects can last for generations if cared for. Fashion trends tend to move slowly due to this
56. Sea serpents aren’t related to snakes at all, but are actually a surviving archosaur lineage from the age of dragons.
57. Tubalkhan is considered the father of the sciences for his careful observation, attention to detail, and use of direct experimentation.
58. Medicinal magic rarely provides an immediate cure to an affliction, as such a rapid change in bodily condition causes its own problems. Instead, magic is used for prevention, symptoms management, and gradual healing.
59. The traveling circus originates with migrant workers and monster-hunters; busking and talent shows are an easy source of extra cash during the off season.
60. Calico cats practice a unique school of magic among felines; human witches of particularly high experience and skill are often called ‘Old Calico’ accordingly.
61. There are no police, but there are detectives. All of them are absolute weirdos in their own special ways, both because the trade attracts those with unusual ways of looking at the world and because the magics used in evidence collection tend to further reinforce those traits.
62. Most city-states will have a robust civil engineering core in place of a standing military: wars are occasional, but the roads always need fixed.
63. Community fire and emergency aid teams are easily identified by their flame-resistant jackets, which are dyed a deep indigo.
64. Deer are semi-donesticated in the Hespermont, and commonly raised for meat in the place of cattle.
65. Acephavara is an exonym (“land of the headless men”) originating from stories of the Thandatra people, whose typically dark skin will often be broken with patterns of lighter color on the chest or back that resemble a face.
66. “Love potion”: a soup, stew, curry or sauce with no additional magical properties; used as a way to teach lovesick young men a useful skill, as well as the value of good food and pleasant conversation in courtship.
67. “Potion of attraction”: triggers an episode of disassociative self-reflection where the imbiber will see themselves as others see them, highlighting the habits and behaviors that make them so unpalatable as a romantic partner.
68. There are few omens on the sea worse than a thin (and therefore hungry) mermaid, and so sailors across the Mare call hard times “the ribs”.
69. War is an extremely efficient means of mass-producing angry ghosts; part of what makes wizards so dangerous is that they can and will use them to their own ends. 
70. The Ang-Ket trade league connects cities all along the circumference of the Mare Interregnum; it’s named after a type of circular fish trap (“ring” or “enclosure”).
71. There are seven planets visible with the naked eye: the sun and moon are cosmologically grouped with earth and not included in the count.
72. Intelligent life can be found on multiple bodies in the solar system, though sustained meaningful contact between any of them has yet to occur.
73. Blues music emerged during the hardships of the post-War rebuilding period, and has since diversified into several robust regional styles.
74. Nerve-linked prosthetic limbs (autobrachia) were first developed ~15 years ago, with many veterans of the War in the North volunteering as first-run recipients.
75. Saffron is relatively cheap and widely used - not because it’s any easier to harvest, but because of widespread small-scale cultivation. 
76. In cases where the cause is unclear, a low-intensity exorcism ritual may be used to determine if an individual is possessed by an evil spirit or suffering from mental illness.
77. The standardized system of weights and measures is base-12, and peacefully coexists alongside local nonspecific systems.
78. Apes (and similarly intelligent relatives of the other Thinking Peoples) have triggered debates of categorization for centuries: most cultures group them under “they can’t really participate in society, but they’re enough like people that killing them is still murder”.
79. Ngata Long-Tusk is an anomaly in the magical world: an elephant that practices human-style goetic wizardry. Has a tower and sigil tattoos and everything. Has not yet caused an international incident but it’s probably only a matter of time.
80. There is a variety of orca (or an orca-like magical being, the line is fuzzy) capable of changing their shape and taking humanoid or wolflike forms. While primarily associated with the northern amazons, they might be encountered all along the northern coasts and islands and they are regular visitors in the city of Redgate.
81. The whalers of Tin Jacobstown might be better thought of as a decentralized mercenary army, profiting off of the war between the illhevi and the other whales. The practice is sustainable only through staying on Orca’s good side through sacrifice and soul-pledges.
82. Ol’ Dunk: legendary sea monster, described as a gigantic fish with an armored head and fused, beak-like teeth.
83. There is a prehistoric Dayrdani method of exorcism still practiced in the modern day; it requires only a circle drawn in the dirt, the sign of the horns, and a series of prayers in an unknown and otherwise extinct language performed with overtone throat singing.
84. Jails are ideal spawning grounds for demons, and thus tend to be limited to the more tyrannical pockets of the world or the ruins left behind by such. In some instances they will reach a critical mass of suffering and transcend into a demonic genius loci, which will then attempt to lure in and entrap life from the surface to feed upon. If this can be prevented, the dungeon will starve and be rendered inert in two or three generations; if it gathers sufficient population, the demonic locus will become self-sustaining and specialized delvers will have to be called in to destroy its heart. The depths of Kulvakh tower were one such location.
85. Interpretation of languages is another keystone magical tradition with prehistoric origins, developing independently in many cultures across the world. A “talkabout” was the period where the parties’ respective cunning-men would speak to each other before official intertribal negotiations.
86. Without some means of cathartic release,  trauma and self-repression can develop into a form of demonic possession that will rot a person from the inside.
87. The town of Machaggan is famous throughout the Low Country for the giant orb made of lustrous blue-silver metal that floats above the central plaza. Its implications are menacing.
88. It was once thought that the Questing Beast would lead those it thought worthy to an elixir of immortality; in reality, their hunting strategy is to lead unwitting humans back to their den to be ambushed by their hatchlings.
89. The Dadu-Qon of the southeastern deserts say that their ancestors copied down a revelation from an angel; they have yet to decipher it, but believe that it will usher in a new age of peace and prosperity to the world when it is at last translated. A few fragments of the being are housed as relics, but the main crash site has not yet been found.
90. It’s said that killing the white stag is is the true sign of kingship in the Northlands; that no one has ever done it is subsequently the true sign that the Northlands needs no king.
91. All a wizard really needs to kill someone, when you get down to it, is eye contact for just long enough to trigger a fatal blood clot. Everything else is just theatrics.
92. The Megapharmikon was the pre-eminent medical text of antiquity and has remained relevant into the modern day thanks to its detailed anatomical diagrams and surgical procedures. The book’s author, the doctor-philosopher Eutukhos, wrote the text as a reflection on his 20 years serving as the surgeon-necromancer of a mercenary company.
93. In the old Longhouse Culture, a village’s chief served primarily as resource manager; great wealth disparity in one’s community was seen as a shameful display of incompetence, and from this came the modern social staple of the public fund.
94. Illuminated manuscripts look like that monk’s gravestone I saw in Kilkenny.
95. By some horticultural miracle, there is a popular strain of marijuana with a pleasant, woody smell. With the right preparation, it smells like the inside of a barbecue pit.
96. Divinatory practices can’t tell the future, but they do provide a framework for thinking about an event (past, future, or present) from different / previously unconsidered angles. 
97. The valkyries of the far north are said to be beautiful shield-maidens who usher the spirits of warriors up into the heavens. This is technically true, but only if one is looking at the proxy body and ignores the primary, which looks something like eight women fused together inside a gold-and-steel carapace.
98. Attempts to catalog the many types of tutelary spirit that act as playmates and protectors of small children have universally met with failure; there are simply too many of them.
99. One of the early confirmations of the world’s sphericality was by a Jantoo wizard who achieved enough height on his flying carpet while trying to catch a migrating phoenix that he was able to observe the curvature of the planet. The extreme cold and negligible air caused him to fall off and plunge nearly 20 miles: he survived the impact unscathed thanks to a spell enacted before he lost consciousness, with the unintended result of widely-visible and extremely funny physical comedy.
100. The Gray Witch saw the War of the Bull and the emergence of Hell firsthand, and since then has worked in secret towards a grand design: she believes that if Hell cannot be defeated then it must be mastered, and that she alone is the one able to bring all its demons to heel. She is opposed by the King of Wands, though his own motivations are obscure.

 

100 Lost Books of Appendix N

Following in the footsteps of Rook over at Foreign Planets, I have delved into the mists of pulp fantasy history to cobble together even more lost books of Appendix N. The picture that's taken form by now is one of a polyvocal document that evolved in stages during the early rpg period. Gygax wielded (I swear every time this word should be "welt") considerable influence over the later stages of the list, and so many of the works listed below were cut because they no longer fit with the game's developing themes and aesthetics. 

The Dinkie Rizzle cut of the Appendix remains at large.

1. Hark! A Swyver!
2. The Pit Beneath the World
3. A Midsummer’s Eve in Carcosa
4. Lady Tsan
5. The Jewels of Qarzat
6. The Last Zodiac
7. Dragonsoul Warrior Part II
8. Accounting for Beasts
9. The House at Calurad
10. Achilles Unconquerable
11. Swords of Evening Fire
12. The Empire of Bells
13. The Queen’s Veil
14. The Golden Chamber
15. Folktales of the Kinnakawmet
16. They Called Us Dogs
17. The Mines of Yar’Zan
18. Nun with the Devil’s Gun
19. A Feast for Randuthax
20. Master of Monstrous Ceremony
21. The Self-Creating King
22. Oshaggan the Orc
23. The Oubliette Decameron
24. Return to the Labyrinth
25. Mark of the Mannangal
26. The Seventh Lion
27. The Ghoul
28. Onward to the Antipode!
29. Nothing Beside Remains
30. Death and the Widow Ammat
31. Dangerous Ladies of Ill Repute
32. The Bloody Pearl
33. The Otter’s Dance
34. Antarctic Spring
35. Neck of the World
36. Wives of the Azure Empress
37. By Odin’s Hoary Beard!
38. Nine Angels Dancing
39. Wyrd Traversal
40. Ignominious Deaths
41. The Gunpowder Duchess
42. The Night Parades
43. Wulfstan Haggar, Exorcist for Hire
44. Third Eye of Horus
45. Arch-Heretic
46. Semblance of Decency
47. Trenchfoot Theater
48. New Goetics
49. The Vault of Tchrok-Hla
50. The Nasshen Masters
51. The Atlantis Trap
52. Those Mocking Sparrows
53. Ymir Dohl and the Cadaver Synod
54. A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of Ashurbanipal
55. The Screaming Idol of Zaam
56. The Round Table Murders
57. The Commissioner
58. Stone Venus
59. The Calico Bobtail
60. Black Auction
61. Giant’s Dice
62. The Mineshaft 9 Expedition
63. Dragon-Scaled Justice
64. The Redwood Witches
65. Decree of the Brazen Head
66. Clown Hunting
67. Hand of Glory
68. When Kasal-Kan Fell
69. Five of Pentacles
70. The Bullet to Kill the Last Elephant
71. Sir Quail and the Panther
72. Artifact Storage Unit 12
73. Underworld Seven
74. Knights of Terrible Grace
75. The Ghost Dance Letters
76. Wizards of Jove
77. Chronicle of the Deep Forest
78. Mushroom Kings
79. The Caves of Akkronath
80. Canticle for the Moon-Maids
81. The Missing Zoa
82. The Cockatrice Club
83. Lord Lakh
84. Spiders in Amber
85. The Seminary
86. Parliament of Birds 
87. Last Voyage of the Flying Dutchman
88. The Sannikov Land Expedition
89. A Long, Bloody War over a Worthless Patch of Dirt
90. City of Old Gods
91. Totality of Being
92. The Rainbow Footpath
93. The Dryad’s Garden
94. Stalin 's Revenge: the Crab-Men Attack!
95. Sword of a Thousand Stars
96. National Geographic Anthropological Survey of Aolai
97. The Catacomb-People
98. Bones of my Grandfather
99. The Red Piper
100. Eudaemon: A New Gospel

Does Lovecraft exist in this Mythos Setting?

Someone asked this on the Delta Green subreddit, and it was fun enough to answer that I've spun it out into a full post.

How Lovecraft is this Mythos? (1d12)

1) HPL existed, but wrote in an entirely different genre 

1. Romantic comedy (boilerplate)
2. Historical adventure (orientalist)
3. Traditional gothic horror (convoluted)
4. Extremely weird transcendentalist poetry (????)

2) HPL existed, and was one of the Miskatonic University scholars who butchered the English translation of the Kitab al-Layl back in the '30s.

3) HPL existed and wrote the stories we know; the unnatural is just something else entirely.

4) It's irrelevant if HPL existed because weird fiction never got off the ground: Hugo Gernsbeck got hit by a melon truck in before he could start publishing pulp magazines.

5) HPL didn't exist; the "unknowable alien gods" niche was filled by some guy named Clarence Quincy Rogers.

6) HPL didn't exist, so the PCs finding books written by him should be extremely concerning.

7) HPL existed and wrote weird fiction, but it was mostly planetary romance and only occasionally brushed up against unknowable alien gods.

8) HPL didn’t technically exist; he was a character invented by a group of science fiction authors in the 60s as part of a collaborative writing project where new HPL stories were regularly "discovered" and published. Those guys definitely used enough LSD to give them better than coinflip odds of actually (if inaccurately) describing something real.

9) HPL existed, wrote the stories we know, but lived to the age of 86 and became a real aggro hardass about people using or even referencing his material. Especially if they did it “wrong”.

10) HPL existed, but mysteriously disappeared prior to publishing any of his Mythos works. Case was never solved and they never found a body 

11) HPL existed, but only the Dream Cycle stories have any truth to them.

12) HPL doesn't exist, and his body of work was fabricated by the Program as a disinformation campaign.

d100 Ways to Get Dragged Into an Isekai

My hand has been forced. Layla is to blame for this.

These work very well as PC backgrounds

How'd You End Up in Another World, Anyway?

1. Visited by Truck-kun, god of death
2. Sudden-onset catastrophic peanut allergy
3. Heart attack during sex
4. Just opened a door and ended up here
5. Car broke down on an Appalachian backroad
6. It’s the fucking mi-go again!
7. They weren’t kidding about that ghost pepper, holy shit
8. Mauled by a hippopotamus
9. Dove in front of a bullet during a hold-up at a KFC
10. A large sharp piece of metal on a highly improbable ricochet trajectory
11. These edibles ain’t shit!
12. Late-stage diedration
13. In your defense, that Craigslist ad looked a lot more legit when you were drunk
14. BEEEEEEEEEEEES!
15. Wizard mafia did it
16. Stepped into the wrong fairy ring
17. Spontaneous Ontological Collapse Syndrome
18. Pinpoint gamma ray burst
19. Recursive dreaming (you’re still probably in a coma)
20. Yithian shunted your consciousness to another universe so it can work on its thesis
21. Tragic professional wrestling accident
22. Devoured by the Conqueror Worm
23. Assassin misread the briefing
24. Unforeseen chain reaction of Wizard Shit™
25. Your world of origin was repossessed by its creditors
26. Football riots got really out of hand.
27. Jazz smooth enough to slip and slide between realities
28. Some people, like you, will go to absurd lengths to impress hot monster-people
29. Took a train through a warp gate like a normal person
30. Died in a video game, died in real life
31. You’re not sure, but you definitely made friends along the way
32. Mangled by badgers
33. Explosive decompression
34. You found one of those missing nukes deep in the woods. Whoops!
35. Got so bored at work that your brain burst from your skull in an attempt to escape
36. Superhero movie long enough to starve you to death
37. Pile of books just fell off a truck, right on top of you.
38. Eagle dropped a turtle from an extremely high altitude
39. Turns out the world is not only flat, but you’ve been living on the edge the entire time
40. You’ve been targeted by a PSYCHIC ATTACK!
41. Paper cuts can really bleed like a motherfucker sometimes
42. You existed vaguely in between Sun Wukong and the guy he was fighting
43. Run over by a train, despite being three miles away from the track
44. Look, that precariously placed cinderblock was going to hit someone, okay?
45. One hell of a night out with the lads
46. KT-Extinction Part 2, The Dinosaurs Strike Back: This Time It’s Personal
47. Existential crisis followed by a more literal derealization than you’re used to
48. In retrospect, that sweepstakes flier offering a free cruise was really suspect
49. Roko’s Basilisk turns out to be really nice and uploads everyone into nested simulated universes because pointless suffering sucks shit
50. Suddenly remembered that one really embarrassing thing you did 20 years ago, automatic cringe response warped local space-time
51. The only thing more dangerous than a monkey with a knife is a monkey with two  knives.
52. Went out in a blaze of glory alongside a squad of radical anarchist catgirls
53. An eel bit your thigh, which caused you to bleed out and die; that’s a moray, baby
54. Turns out life is a roguelike
55. Human beings are generally not designed to eat that much watermelon in one sitting
56. Poorly calibrated treadmill launched you through the wall
57. By means of a rigorously-researched and systematic series of scientific principles, which will now be explained in excruciating detail…
58. Fell upwards
59. Floor was, in fact, lava
60. Disease so novel you get to be a case study
61. Lost a fight with some seagulls
62. Banished for unspecified crimes against uncertain parties
63. You discovered the Secret Chord, but man you aren’t very good on the harp
64. Cast into the primordial waters of chaos
65. Found out the hard way you were almost as lucky as Phineas Gage
66. Accidental demon summoning
67. Intentional demon summoning
68. Sometimes things just be that way
69. Your stint in Antarctica did not go as well as you’d hoped
70. You just had to touch the clearly cursed mystic artifact, didn’t you
71. Astral projection to other planets like a true planetary romance protagonist
72. Walked through the mirror
73. Descended into the underworld
74. Cthulhu wanted a snack before hitting the road
75. The spiders have had enough of your bullshit
76. How the hell did you end up underneath a steamroller?
77. A horse with an attitude problem kicked you right into next week
78. Maladaptive daydreaming
79. You weren’t about to let a little lactose intolerance get in the way of that ice cream
80. A meme so dead it’s gained an area-of-effect attack
81. Surprise! Words can also break your bones!
82. Quantum fluctuations, or some bullshit like that
83. You had to close the causal loop somehow
84. Fugu Prep for Absolute Buffoons was not a wise purchase
85. Everything changed when the [ANTAGONIST FACTION] attacked
86. Screamed into the void; void screamed back
87. Unwitting purchase and use of KJB-brand cigarettes that kill you instantly
88. Yet another casualty of an unending blood feud
89. Base dropped too hard
90. Personal microbiome declares rebellion, forms separatist government
91. You tried this at home
92. Fell in a surprisingly deep hole
93. Suddenly remembered that you had Dimension Door prepped and ready
94. Plucked from your comfortable life to be a pawn for the gods
95. Fought an old man in a profession that dies young
96. Lightning struck twice, just to make sure
97. Got hit by the victim of a tragic skydiving accident
98. Aliens abducted you, got bored, dumped you on Venus because it’s “close enough”
99. Had nothing better to do with your afternoon
100. Fuck if you know, this genre doesn’t care about how it all works