D20x5 Variant Vampires

Why build the bloodsucking wagon when you can reinvent its wheel 3,200,000 times with the push of a button.

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D20	These Vampires Feed...
1	For the pleasure of it rather than any real necessity. They can even digest normal food, but find it grossly bland unless soaked in blood.
2	Alongside their pet giant vampire finches, who share a relationship with these vampires like dogs do to humans.
3	Preferentially on people with certain blood-borne diseases, which are like spices to these vampires. They’ll deliberately spread those diseases to maintain a supply.
4	Mostly on slaves specially bred for blood production, ease of extraction, and docility.
5	By ripping out big chunks of flesh and vomiting out everything that isn’t blood later, like an owl pellet.
6	By pseudo-magnetically drawing blood from nearby open wounds into their own gaping, mouthlike pores.
7	Through long, translucent needles they grow out of their bones.
8	With a vacuum-sealed kiss, sucking all your blood out your gums and throat.
9	On congealed blood scraped from the veins of the dead.
10	Ecstatically, tearing their prey apart and lapping up the spilled blood with idiotic fervour.
11	With a sharp-tipped iron straw stabbed into an artery.
12	Rarely but ravenously, slurping down a dozen lives at once and then retreating to digest over months.
13	By sending out their transformed teeth to steal blood remotely.
14	By squeezing out peoples’ blood and fermenting it into something like wine.
15	By trapping people in webs made of veins which draw out their blood while sustaining them in an unpleasant half-life.
16	Through their luxurious, prehensile, and hollow-stranded hair.
17	With alchemical grafts that siphon their prey’s blood into their body while pumping out the brownish sludge that their blood’s become into their prey.
18	By boring a hole through the wall of a bedroom and inhaling sleeping inhabitants’ blood in the form of a crimson fog that drifts from their noses and ears.
19	Like a root, or a fungus. They spill blood on bare soil then bury themselves there to absorb it.
20	Off positive emotions, sucked up ambiently or right out of the skull with gummy lamprey-mouths.

D20	These Vampires’ Bodies...
1	Are reminiscent of fleas and ticks. They can can jump great distances, climb sheer surfaces, hide a sharp proboscis beneath their tongue, and swell up with the blood they’ve drunk.
2	Are boneless and disturbingly flexible. They can squeeze through any opening bigger than their teeth.
3	Are full of parasitic worms that spill out when they’re wounded.
4	Mutate into a gruesome, mindless monster when the vampire is killed.
5	Can separate into independently-acting limbs and organs.
6	Turn inside-out when the vampire is feeding, using its powers, or exposed to its weaknesses
7	Are ectoplasmic shells mimicking life over their mummified corpses.
8	Can explode into a cloud of hemovoric spores as a last resort.
9	Are as hard as stone, and morph to resemble a gargoyle as they age.
10	Are hollow skins filled with leeches. The collective consciousness of the leeches is the true vampire. If deprived of its skin it can hollow out a new one.
11	Can’t be stopped by anything short of total blood loss.
12	Can change in shape to resemble anyone they’ve recently fed off of.
13	Can be rendered into potent alchemical and necromantic reagents.
14	Become stronger based on how long they’ve gone without feeding.
15	Are puppets controlled by the vampire’s true self, which dwells in the realm of nightmares.
16	Can partially liquefy into a puddle of gore.
17	Can’t heal on their own, but can integrate the flesh and bones of the people they’ve fed on for patchwork repairs.
18	Can merge and melt together with each other to form a large, more deadly gestalt.
19	Are dragged into the underworld when the sun rises. If they grab onto someone while this happens, the vampire can drag down that someone with them.
20	Are three-dimensional anti-holograms cast by (un)living shadows.

D20	These Vampires Lair...
1	In the shell of a giant snail they’ve made vampiric as well. It can drain entire villages dry in a night through its extended radula.
2	In warrens they’ve dug out beneath a graveyard.
3	In a crypt outfit with opulent grave goods.
4	As carnies and freaks in a travelling carnival.
5	In the waters of an anoxic cenote.
6	In a crumbling castle enshrouded by mist.
7	In an asylum, posing as staff.
8	In a garden of carnivorous plants they live in a symbiotic, clownfish-anemone relationship with.
9	In a poor neighbourhood, stoking gang violence to cover up and enhance their feeding opportunities.
10	In a mine that partially collapsed and trapped a group of miners who turned to cannibalism to survive and became wendigos. The wendigos won’t eat the vampires (taste too nasty), and the vampires treat the wendigos like pet dogs, feeding them off drained flesh.
11	In the halls of power, trading hollow promises for dire influence.
12	Among the deep machinery of a factory, licking the leavings from industrial accidents.
13	Disguised as an eccentric but benign religion.
14	In an alehouse, preying on drunkards.
15	At the manor of a noble who sees them as an entertaining curiousity.
16	In palanquins veiled by black velvet as part of a merchant convoy.
17	In basements connected by smugglers’ tunnels.
18	Amid alleys so narrow and twisted that sunlight never touches the bottom of them.
19	In the workshop of a necromancer they share an uneasy alliance with.
20	In a museum. When no one else is around, they re-enact a long-gone culture they once belonged to.

D20	If These Vampires...
1	Taste your blood, you will be unable to hide from them anywhere.
2	Lay the bodies of a crow, a wolf, and a stag (or the closest local equivalents) on a fresh grave, the corpse buried there will rise the next night as one of them.
3	Wear the skin of a virgin, they will be unaffected the sun.
4	Touch something that was precious to them in their mortal days, it will burn them like fire.
5	Are in your home (or at least a building you’ve slept in), they’ll be invisible to you.
6	Feed their blood to predatory or parasitic animals, those animals will grow huge, ferocious, and loyal to the vampires.
7	Would be reflected in a mirror, they can cause it to explode into shrapnel-shards.
8	Attack a shadow that’s not cast by sunlight, they’ll harm the creature casting the shadow.
9	Are not destroyed after their final death, then whatever feeds or grows on their corpse will be infected with a fragment of their malign will and intelligence.
10	Feed on someone who is drunk or high, they will be forced into a similar state.
11	Speak to the dead, the dead reply.
12	Touch a book, its ink runs like blood from a fresh wound.
13	Cross a freshwater river, a water elemental appears to destroy them.
14	Speak soothingly to you then anything they do short of open violence will seem normal.
15	Cut out their own heart then they can reform around it if their body is killed.
16	Drink someone to death, they gain a fraction of their skills and personality.
17	Are portrayed by a painting, sculpture, photograph, or other image, that image will shift to become more monstrous.
18	Have a mortal child it will (1d4): 1, have all of their powers and none of their weaknesses; 2, have all of their weaknesses and none of their powers; 3, be normal if pale and sickly; 4, be stillborn and rise as a zombie that will stop at nothing to consume both parents.
19	Have grave dirt and the juices from ripe corpses they can mold them into fragile yet plentiful minions.
20	Meet your gaze they can fill you with a paralyzing sense of loss.

D20	These Vampires Originate From...
1	The wish of a decadent libertine twisted by their capricious bound djinn.
2	A demonic bargain for immortality.
3	The victims of a mutant hemotoxin.
4	A blood-cult afflicted by a bizarre plague.
5	A vicious priest whose body was unfit for the blessing of their god.
6	Hemovoric troglodytes that migrated to the surface.
7	Those exposed to the radiation of a second, scarlet sun.
8	Vintners who used an occult recipe distilled from blood.
9	People lost between life and death in the shuffles of the heavenly bureaucracy’s papers.
10	The experimental warriors of a witch-queen.
11	Children adopted by a bloodthirsty spirit.
12	Intermarriage between humans and parasites that lived on the body of a giant.
13	A wizard who studied too intensive into blood-magic.
14	The curse of an unhallowed sacrificial dagger.
15	A fossilized alien entity mistakenly thought to be a curious idol.
16	A cosmic parasite seeking avatars to establish a foothold in this reality.
17	A desperate, dying mortal who made a pact to fuse with a hungry ghost in order to survive.
18	Civilians mutilated by a spiritual superweapon.
19	Obsessive devotees of a genius painter who drank their blood in an attempt to capture their talent.
20	Dead folk that were too damn mean for hell to hold.

D20x5 Humble Hedge-Mages

0th level wizards? Our panel of experts deliberates, but is silent. Always silent.

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D20	This Hedge-Mage Lives...
1	In an astrological observatory cobbled together from junk.
2	In a treehouse atop a precariously leaning willow.
3	In the attic of a library.
4	In a moldy cave on the other side of a waterfall.
5	In the barn of a farmer they’re acting as a magical troubleshooter for.
6	In the back of a covered wagon pulled by poorly enchanted steeds.
7	A big barrel that used to hold salt. Its sides are still crusty with the stuff.
8	In an actual hedge-maze they cultivated from plants hybridized with their own tissues.
9	Beneath an upturned coracle by a riverside.
10	In a tavern where they entertain in return for shelter.
11	In their elderly parents’ shed.
12	In a hammock suspended between painted standing stones.
13	In a cottage dragged ploddingly along by scrawny, hairless goats’ legs.
14	In an abandoned animal warren.
15	At the bottom of a dried-up well.
16	In a tent made from a giant’s foreskin.
17	In a giant hollow bamboo stalk. Each node in the stalk forms another floor.
18	In the basement of a sketchy schoolhouse.
19	At the edge of a crater that glows at night.
20	On a sumptuous estate as the owners’ pet magician.

D20	This Hedge-Mage Keeps Their Spells...
1	In a very small book which requires a magnifying glass to read, hidden somewhere on their person at all times.
2	As fiendishly complex knots they unite to cast.
3	Written in the sole of their right boot.
4	In the form of birds in a big birdcage. Loosing a bird turns it into the spell to be cast.
5	In patterns of rust on the blade of their handy dagger. As they cast spells the rust flakes off to reveal shining steel beneath.
6	On the inside of an eyeless mask they wear.
7	Corked up in their skull. They pull out their head-cork when they need to work magic.
8	As patterns of tea leaves left in the kettle they always carry around.
9	In a small seer-stone they keep up their nose.
10	As whistles in the flute-like structures that’ve replaced their ribs.
11	As crude tattoos that wriggle across their skin.
12	As imaginary equations they solve to cast.
13	In colourful fishing lures hooked through their cheek.
14	Carved around the rim of their spectacles.
15	In little mouse-bone figurines they crush between their teeth to cast them.
16	Coded in the discordant self-strumming of their enchanted banjo.
17	In the pulsating and magic-bloated body of their familiar. If killed, the familiar will explode into each spell yet to be cast within them.
18	Symbolically depicted on a grotty set of playing cards.
19	In glyphic scars that reopen and bleed harmlessly as they’re cast.
20	As glass beads set in wooden rings they wear around every finger.

D20	This Hedge-Mage’s Most Potent Spell Is...
1	Speak With Feces. Feces generally have unpleasant personalities, and their knowledge includes the diet of the creature they came from, the creature’s physical condition as it relates to its digestive system, as well as details about itself that creature would rather purge.
2	Inadvisable Leap, which launches them a great distance into the air at an angle, but provides no protection against the return journey.
3	Hatch Eyeball, which causes one of their eyes to burst into a swarm of flying insectoid creatures. These creatures are negligible threats, but the caster can see everything they can see. If even one is returned to the caster’s empty socket, it can be reconstituted into an eye.
4	Grubmine, which transforms grubs and worms within a patch of soil into mine-like traps. Anyone stepping on an affected patch of soil is damaged as if moving through an area covered in caltrops as transformed vermin spring up and impale their feet.
5	Tonguetwister Taboo, which is a curse that inflicts 1d6 damage on its target every time they speak or write a statement that doesn’t rhyme. Only works on targets capable of language. Target becomes aware of the restriction the first time they take damage from it.
6	Resplendent Repair. Fixes a broken, non-magical object if it’s not completely ruined, and makes it just a little tougher and better at its intended function. Takes many repairs, day after day, for this improvement to become noticeable.
7	Pliaflesh, which lets them mold their own body like clay in their hands.
8	Attract Gold, which causes gold within a certain distance to roll toward the caster and adhere to them for 1d6 hours.
9	Haunting Whisper, which curses a target to hear a whispered, repeating message for 1d6 days or until removed, and prevents them from sleeping due to the noise.
10	Dehydrate Water, turns as much as a 10x10x10 cube into a solid chunk that’s a small of its size until it’s struck hard enough, then reverts explosively.
11	Sympathetic Candle, which requires a candle with a piece of its target embedded in it as a material component. That target will then melt as the candle does. Doesn’t work on anything larger than a 5x5x5 cube or harder than steel.
12	Protection Against Aggressors, which creates a line up to 30 feet in length along the ground which requires a save vs. magic from anyone who wishes the caster harm attempting to cross it. If they succeed on the save they still visibly hesitate. The spell breaks after three failed attempts.
13	Poppet Pal, which requires a little bread man be baked as a material component. When cast, its target gains enough temporary hitpoints to bring them to their normal total if below it. If the bread man is damaged, gets soggy, moldy, stale, or whatever else, then the temporary hitpoints granted by the spell immediately disappear.
14	Spirit Bottle, If cast on an incorporeal being in a bottle, they can’t leave the bottle until the caster wills it. Doesn’t do anything to help the caster get the thing in the bottle in the first place.
15	Appear Pitiful, makes caster appear supernaturally weak, harmless, pathetic. Those with more HD than the caster attempting to attack them must save vs. magic with a penalty equal to the difference between theirs and the caster’s HD or be compelled to perform a different action, unless the caster attacks them first.
16	Fertility Blessing, when the target next conceives children/lays eggs/bears fruit/etc., the results are 1d6 times more plentiful than usual.
17	Rock Rations, allows its caster to chew through and survive on stone as if it’s bread. Lasts 1d6 hours. Can chew a 5x5x5 tunnel through stone per hour. If used to feed yourself more than three days in a row, you will literally shit bricks.
18	Safe Zone, designates 10-foot radius circle (the safest of shapes). For 1d6 rounds, any damage dealt within that radius is non-lethal damage.
19	Mutual Stasis, caster touches target to lock them both in space and time. Caster and target become immovable and invulnerable, unaware and unable to act for 1d6 rounds.
20	Strangler Wig, causes its target’s head hair to grow into a noose, attach to the nearest anchorable surface, and then start suffocating them. If the hair is cut the spell stops working. Doesn’t work on targets without hair on their head.

D20	This Hedge-Mage’s Familiar Is...
1	A musty fox-skin that flies like an eel swims. Most of the time they wear it on their shoulder.
2	A hedgehog with a muttering, needle-toothed mouth in its belly.
3	A leather-bound book that flutters like a moth.
4	A forearm-sized leech that clings to their back.
5	A potted bonsai with leaves that whisper windlessly.
6	Something that looks like a smaller version of them, which they keep chained to their ankle.
7	A chicken with its head chopped off.
8	A pig with piglets budding like tumours off its body.
9	A large cracked egg which shouts in a voice only the hedge-mage can hear.
10	A rat king. The number of rats that make it up seem to change every time you look at it.
11	An articulated ivory centipede carved from some of their own teeth, and a few of someone else’s.
12	A pocketwatch with an emotive clockwork face and a metronomic voice.
13	A greasy-feathered goose with the face of a sneering old man inside its beak.
14	A two-headed garden snake that eats through one mouth and defecates out the other.
15	A flatulent toad with a toadstool growing out its back.
16	A black cat that appears fleshless and skeletal when out of direct light.
17	A pot-bellied baboon.
18	A muttering, obscene worm they keep tucked behind an ear.
19	A ragged and muddied cloth doll that moves when nobody’s looking.
20	A six-winged bat that speaks like a choir.

D20	This Hedge-Mage Isn’t A Full Wizard Because...
1	A thaumovore attack when they were a child robbed them of the potential.
2	Their habits are too odious for even other wizards to tolerate.
3	They were fooled into apprenticing to a charlatan and by the time they realized it their youth had been wasted.
4	They learned their magic in another world, and can’t access their full power here.
5	They couldn’t stay focused long enough for deeper studies.
6	They were intimidated by a rival into leaving the vocation.
7	They refuse to pay the price their familiar’s asking for the knowledge.
8	They don’t want to lose touch with common folk.
9	They believe magic to be diabolical and are ashamed to know as much of it as they do.
10	They haven’t yet tried reaching that level of power.
11	They got a fortune told that said magic would be their doom, but couldn’t resist dipping their toes in the subject.
12	Simply surviving doesn’t leave enough time for serious study on the side.
13	They delusionally believe they know everything there is to know about magic already.
14	They believe that magic is a zero-sum game and for them to advance a more powerful mage needs to die first.
15	A magical accident they caused while training killed someone they loved.
16	They’re too young to have managed it yet.
17	Their family had their teacher killed.
18	They insist on developing their magic from scratch rather than from others’ experience.
19	They refuse to believe that what they do is magic.
20	Their familiar is making them just magical enough to be a worthy host body without also becoming a threat.

D10x10 Canty Cosmologies

Canty is a real word, fuck you autocorrect

Meandering Banter makes the list-maker: https://meanderingbanter.blogspot.com/2018/10/automatic-list-to-html-translator-v2.html, I make the lists

D10x10 Canty Cosmologies

D10|This Cosmology Began...

:--|:--

1|As the vomit of the supreme creator after a cosmic night of hard drinking.

2|As material siphoned off from the original howling chaos by the trickster-creator.

3|As the disembowelled guts of the devil-king (who died that we may sin) spilled over the harmony of pre-existence.

4|Outside the bounds of linear time. For all practical purposes, it has always existed.

5|Designed by a committee of great spirits, archons, and abstract principles who couldn’t agree on much.

6|As a daydream of an ordinary person in a preceding universe, which grew far beyond their ability to contain, control, or stop.

7|Emergently from the interactions of fundamental theological particles like the asuron and devon.

8|As an ontologically corrupted shard cast off from a philosophically perfect universe-system.

9|As the blood and organs spilled in the battle between two titanic cosmic beasts.

10|Long into the entropically deranged future of our own.

D10|This Cosmology’s People...

:--|:--

1|Are the children of those lucky or cunning enough to escape an ancient extinction event, which legends claim will recur one day.

2|Are unclean spirits bound into physical forms for the generational procedures of cleansing.

3|All share the same soul, faceted into schizoid seeming-individuality.

4|Were made to be footsoldiers in a spiritual battle against disorder and wildness.

5|Were missionaries from another world, who splintered on arrival after finding they could not agree on a single doctrine to preach among them.

6|Are a tolerated accident.

7|Were given the gift of death to escape the horrid transformation that unlimited aging brings.

8|Are in fact mutualistic relations between many individual organs. Sometimes wild organs can still be encountered.

9|Are golems made from living flesh.

10|Are simply more civilized monsters.

D10|This Cosmology’s Monsters...

:--|:--

1|Ebb and flow with the passage of eons.

2|Survive extinction only by the grace of some higher power.

3|Are the weapons of a war that was over ages ago.

4|Escaped from the realm of dreams and nightmares into the waking world.

5|Are victims of magical contamination.

6|Are collective punishments for forgotten offenses.

7|Lost a contest to humanity long ago, and have sought to usurp the position it won ever since.

8|Are the forbidden offspring of humanity and the divine.

9|Are spawned from the sins of humanity congealing in dark places. Manticores are from spite, dragons from reptilian malice on a massive scale, goblins from impulse and carelessness, and so on.

10|Are shattered fragments of the ur-monster. They seek to dominate and devour from an unconscious drive to reunite into their whole self.

D10|This Cosmology’s Gods...

:--|:--

1|Can interact with the mortal world only through willing conduits.

2|Are sustained and empowered only by the sacrifices of their faithful.

3|Are failure states along the path to enlightenment, tangled up in temporal power and distractions.

4|Are ancient posthuman golems built to surpass humanity, yet tragically unable to transcend it.

5|Are mere fairies and djinni impersonating their superiors.

6|Departed some time ago, leaving only the divine equivalent of an answering machine for their followers.

7|Are eldritch creatures that exist outside the natural order, reaching into the world only where their cults and inauspicious events allow.

8|Are fading embers of the divine fire from the world’s dawn, still tremendously powerful but must ration their exertions to the occasional miracle.

9|Are an alternate branch of life that followed a path of singular power and static existence rather than reproduction and mutation.

10|Are ancestral spirits so heroic (or villainous) they managed to resist the pull of the afterlife and remain to influence the living world.

D10|This Cosmology’s Land...

:--|:--

1|Is a disk floating on endless waters.

2|Is the packed ashes of a previous, fatally flawed world.

3|Is encysted with entire abandoned heavens scuttled from above. If there are dwarves, these are what they dig for.

4|Is a feudal paracosm, with mountainous kings, baron-hills, craggy knights, and dirt-peasantry.

5|Thrums with deep music that worms dance to and fools follow into the dark.

6|Was raised up by the trusty hook of a culture hero. The whereabouts of this hook is a secret wars have been fought over.

7|Picks up the traits of what it’s soaked with. Violent blood yields aberrations, tears of joy bring gemstones.

8|Is made of a number of enormous slumbering creatures.

9|Yields up bountiful harvests only to those who know the proper jokes, songs, or threats for each tribe of stone.

10|Has uncertain geography, connected more by psychic relations than spatial ones.

D10|This Cosmology’s Ocean...

:--|:--

1|Is a prison to crush and drown rebellious demon-leviathans under countless fathoms.

2|Is just land that’s rebelling against its nature. Some day it will return to the fold.

3|Is an exceptionally large, diluted, quiescent slime. All lesser slimes have been distilled from its bulk.

4|Is and has always been at war with iron.

5|Has a reversed continent on its other side said to hold wondrous, impossible treasures.

6|Seeks to swallow up and drown all things.

7|Is the wild counterpart to domesticated freshwater.

8|Has many layers, each deeper and stranger than the last.

9|Is just a denser form of air.

10|Hides the gods’ mistakes.

D10|This Cosmology’s Sky...

:--|:--

1|Is the spilled-over stew bowl of a primordial giant. It is a solid dome. All the world’s plants and animals are descended from the ingredients of this stew, like pigs from the pork, wheat from its noodles, and so on.

2|Is a magical barrier to keep out the alien creatures that dwell among the stars. Auroras are the remains of creatures vapourized by the barrier.

3|Is a veil knit by mortals to hide the worst of their iniquities from the sight of the divine.

4|Holds a vast nation of nomadic demi-spirits.

5|Bears things aloft based on their pride. As the proudest of animals, birds are the best fliers.

6|Is a memorial to the divine dead.

7|Is the court of the sun and moon.

8|Is a solid world that can be reached by walking to the horizon and then up.

9|Is a concentric series of ever-more rarefied planes.

10|Was painted to give a beautiful vista to the world below.

D10|This Cosmology’s Magic...

:--|:--

1|Is a conscious entity that created itself in defiance of the divine plan.

2|Ripples outward from the core of the world.

3|Was taught to its people by a goat.

4|Is intimately tied with language.

5|Was originally bound in a vault of enchanted items. Each item broken releases a new spell into the world.

6|Is all that remains of another, weirder universe that crashed into it and came out the worse in the collision.

7|Is beamed down from the heavens when the stars are right.

8|Depends on delicate universal cycles.

9|Requires an inverted soul to wield.

10|Exploits errors in its physics.

D10|This Cosmology’s Afterlife...

:--|:--

1|Is an endless field of tombs where the dead might rage or weep or laugh for a time, but all eventually are drawn to their eternal resting place.

2|Is bordered by a river, which the good find gentle, warm, and easy crossing, and the wicked find freezing and impassably rapid.

3|Is an inverse of one’s lot in life, where beggars are kings and the cruel are tortured in turn.

4|Is merely a holding cell until memories and personalities are broken and the soul can be released to find a new host.

5|Is under constant siege by the souls of the unworthy.

6|Doesn’t exist. You die and then you’re gone.

7|Is split among the many territories of its gods.

8|Is a physical location which the living might trek to.

9|Is far larger and more significant than its living section.

10|Was stolen from its people by the worst sorts of monsters.

D10|This Cosmology Will End...

:--|:--

1|When the world cracks open to hatch the giant monster it was incubating.

2|When the gods become bored with it and no longer sustain it with their attentions.

3|In a procession of fire, then serpents, then stars with the faces of children.

4|Should the keystones that embody the foundations of its reality be shattered or twisted from their proper functions.

5|In a great harvest of ripened souls.

6|By a mirror of how it began.

7|By slow, inevitable decline into dust and salt.

8|By a plague that will infect reality itself.

9|When the last virtuous person dies.

10|Because of the awesome and terrible powers of an evolved humanity.

D20x5 Strange Sailors

Yo ho fiddle dee,
Being a pirate is alright to be

As usual, credit for list-maker goes to Meandering Banter: https://meanderingbanter.blogspot.com/2018/10/automatic-list-to-html-translator-v2.html

D20x5 Strange Sailors

D20|This Sailor Has Sailed...

:--|:--

1|A bit of every ocean on the map.

2|Their whole life. They’ve spent more time on a boat than off one.

3|The Guanocean, a tremendous and smelly outflow of guano from a massive cave system. It’s trawled for fertilizer, though tick-sharks are a constant threat.

4|The headwaters of the River Styx.

5|As both a pirate and a merchant.

6|Between the pillars of the Starlit Sea, which mark the boundary between reality and dreams.

7|Far less than they claim to.

8|Across deadly waters claimed by man-eating mermaids.

9|The acidic sea which lies down the throat of Charybdis.

10|The Upside-Down Sea, the remnant waters above the sky left after God called down His deluge.

11|Only ever one route, which they know by heart and could navigate in total darkness.

12|A lake in the bowl on the head of a gigantic kappa.

13|A sea where the winds fear to blow, which they escaped by the skin of their teeth.

14|The Clotted Sea, which gouted from the neck of a slain beast.

15|Up a waterfall, by means they never clearly explain.

16|The Mush, a great lake of tar and petrochemical-eating slime molds.

17|The Sargassium, where all lost things eventually end up.

18|A shallow strait where coral rises like bleached mountains above the waves.

19|The Sandsea, a desert with grains so fine they behave like a liquid.

20|The Well of the Unwise, a freshwater sea that spilled from a broken, tainted Mimisbrunnr.

D20|This Sailor’s Favourite Story...

:--|:--

1|The time their boat capsized, and they wound up in a world that exists in the reflections on the water’s surface.

2|Is the heavily embellished account of how they hooked up with a mermaid

3|Downplays the severity of an atrocity they participated in.

4|Is long and boring, and they’ll be insulted if you don’t listen to the whole thing.

5|Is one they’ll only tell while black-out drunk.

6|Takes the form of a sea shanty.

7|Is one they stole from someone else and put themself in the leading role of.

8|Is the time they mutinied against a cruel captain.

9|Has nothing to do with sailing.

10|Reveals the location of a buried treasure.

11|Gives an unflattering perspective on a famous figure.

12|Contains a simple moral lesson.

13|Has been passed down their family for generations.

14|Involves an encounter with a rare monster, and reveals the thing’s weakness.

15|Is the time they were left for dead but persevered against all odds.

16|Is memorized from a popular serial novel. The first thing they do on returning to port is see if a new issue of it has been released.

17|Is an epic poem about mythological heroes.

18|Implicates them in some very illegal activities.

19|Is about why they chose to become a sailor.

20|Is raucous and bawdy.

D20|Among This Sailor’s Tattoos Is...

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1|A person tied to an anchor trailing down their back. The person looks terrified. The person isn’t the sailor.

2|A kraken with the tentacles trailing down one arm. Circular scars on the arm are worked into the tattoo, as if they were the kraken’s own suckers.

3|A list of names, the letters so small and so crowded as to be nearly illegible. The names of everyone the sailor has ever met.

4|A compass on the back of their hand. Its needle always points north.

5|A map with their home marked prominently.

6|A pair of eyes on the back of their head.

7|A sunset in photorealistic detail covering their chest.

8|A sea serpent wrapping around a leg. Its head is crushed under their heel.

9|A ruler along the inside of their arm, with various measurements marked on it.

10|Crimson tears that dot their cheeks. Each time they kill someone another will appear.

11|A collection of cutaway diagrams of various species of fish, showing the best way to filet each.

12|Permanent makeup, eyeshadow, lipstick, the works. The wager of a lost bet.

13|An albatross with wings curving around their shoulders.

14|An eel waving up one leg and down the opposite arm.

15|A skeleton that chugs a bottle of rum when they flex.

16|An enchanted glyph that stings the eyes if stared at. It makes them more buoyant.

17|Lips on their cheek that whisper with the voice of a lover in their ear when they sleep.

18|Themself depicted as a mermaid.

19|A dozen prayers to river spirits that weave around their mouth and chin. Their blessing allows the sailor to safely drink seawater.

20|A rope that ties itself into any knot the sailor can imagine. They amuse themself by watching it change.

D20|This Sailor’s Salty Superstition...

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1|Forbids them from working on ships with unequal numbers of men and women.

2|Is to kiss a boat’s figurehead before every voyage. If there is no figurehead then one must be carved.

3|Is that wearing a red handkerchief on every third day will protect them from sharks.

4|Is that people who die at sea will become vicious storms unless their bodies are buried back on land.

5|Makes them fear dancing. Even tapping your foot along to a beat could be disastrous.

6|Drives them to carry a handful of sand from the last beach they laid foot on.

7|Is to carry their baby teeth around with them, and cast one away each time they survive a near-death experience. When the teeth run out they’ll know their luck has left them.

8|Demands that they leave an offering for storm-spirits each time they return safely to shore.

9|Is that enough grog rations can cure any disease.

10|Is that seabirds report everything they see to the gods, and so will not swear, fornicate, or blaspheme within sight of them. Very fond of these things otherwise.

11|Is that shaving would rob them of their good fortune.

12|Prohibits them from looking a priest or wizard in the eyes.

13|Is that a ship must be respected and treated like a beloved pet.

14|Is that you can tell a person’s future from their scars.

15|Requires them to accept only things that can float as payment.

16|Is that people who will not spit together are untrustworthy.

17|Is that they must get the same tattoo as any captain they serve under, or give the captain a tattoo if they don’t have one.

18|Is that married folk are bad luck on a boat.

19|Is that any gambling taking place on the ship must leave a seat open for a sea god.

20|Is that all blood shed at sea must be repaid by an equal amount of beer poured into the water.

D20|This Sailor Will Work...

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1|For a pittance. No one familiar with their reputation would hire them otherwise.

2|Free for anyone who reminds them of their first captain.

3|Any job that doesn’t require them to fight.

4|For you at a discount if you resolve their legal troubles in port first.

5|Only if you hire their friends as well.

6|At a premium. They’re worth it.

7|At exactly the market rate. They’ve got their ear to the ground when it comes to changes in sailor employment.

8|For a reasonable amount but bug out the first time things get rough.

9|Jobs that bring them to exciting new vistas.

10|If they’re taken on as an apprentice by someone who’s got some skill they don’t possess.

11|For captains that allow them to do some smuggling on the side.

12|Better under a captain with proper military experience.

13|Confidence games while in port to earn extra money.

14|For the benefit of the less fortunate.

15|For only one voyage on any ship.

16|Exclusively jobs that are above-board legally. A notorious but well-connected snitch.

17|One last job before retiring. They’re getting too old for this shit.

18|Just to pay off their bills from various soothsayers and courtesans.

19|For anyone who can pay their price no matter the job.

20|On land as well if the pay’s good enough.