Archons March On: D20x5 Hedge-Knights

Friday, May 24, 2019

Still got some words left

D20	This hedge-knight appears
1	with beauty gone and flesh wasted.
2	decrepit and grey.
3	wrapped hand and face with moldering bandages.
4	scarred and tattooed such that the original tint of their skin can’t be told beneath them all.
5	haggard and drawn.
6	leathery and weather-beaten.
7	languorous, half-closed eyes dreaming of a place far from here.
8	to always be baring their cracked brown teeth.
9	smeared with mud, leaves and grasses stuck among their hair.
10	with one eye milky white, the other so bloodshot it looks a solid red.
11	wearing a horse’s steel barding, crudely modified to somewhat fit a human shape.
12	with a wooden nose carved to cover the hole left by the loss of their own.
13	in rags held together by accumulated filth as much as by stitching.
14	much too young to fight, kill, die.
15	shaken, always shaking.
16	ephemerally waifish.
17	stripped of fat and extraneous flesh, every muscle and tendon standing out in tension straining for release.
18	limping and leaning, greatly favouring a less injured side.
19	thick and bristly.
20	to never raise their voice above a hoarse whisper.

D20	This hedge-knight wields
1	a cudgel run through with rusty nails.
2	a longsword broken off halfway down the blade.
3	fists wrapped in leather, and wrapped again with inch-long thorns to make spiny cestuses (cestii?).
4	a pair of notched kitchen cleavers.
5	a woodsman’s axe, scabbed over like an old wound.
6	a stack of horseshoes tied at the end of a rope to make a flail.
7	a pitchfork with the side tines snapped off to make something almost like a spear.
8	a blade of old, corroded bronze, stolen from a barrow-mound.
9	a bow and flint-knapped arrows, made with their own hands by the oldest ways.
10	a lance, cut down to be usable on foot, a soiled favour still dangling from its tip.
11	a whaler’s harpoon.
12	a cavalryman’s sabre, bent in too many places.
13	anything they can lay their hands on. They consider being able to murder a man with a wooden spoon a point of pride.
14	a sledgehammer, with brutal simplicity.
15	a stiletto and a meathook.
16	a cut-down blunderbuss loaded with rocks and caltrops.
17	a miner’s pick.
18	a war scythe.
19	a stout walking stick with rock-hard knobs of fungus sprouting along it.
20	a fine sword, well-kept despite everything, the last remnant of their once-noble house.

D20	This hedge-knight would fight for nothing more than
1	the promise of revenge against the one who orchestrated their fall from fortune.
2	some lively livestock.
3	love, to be loved despite their sorry state.
4	a bottle of stiff drink, and fight better for a dose of a stranger drug.
5	the chance that they might be remembered in song as better than they’ve lived.
6	good company and trustworthy fellows to guard them while they sleep.
7	a title, any title, a taste of their former prestige.
8	news of their family.
9	the gift of better gear.
10	the guarantee of a death that wins some glory.
11	bargain mercenary wages.
12	a warm, perfumed bath with soap.
13	getting to go somewhere nobody knows them.
14	a bed somewhere with four walls and a roof.
15	charitable donations made in their name.
16	the opportunity to lead others into battle.
17	a squire willing to train in their techniques and code.
18	a tabard stitched with their sigil.
19	protection from the local law enforcement they’ve offended.
20	some land decent enough to farm.

D20	A bad habit this hedge-knight has picked up in their penury is
1	banditry, waylaying fellow travellers for pennies.
2	drunkenness, chugging any moonshine, hooch, or swill they can get their trembling mitts on.
3	sleeplessness, long stretches of insomnia pierced by shrieking nightmares.
4	coarseness, crudeness, and general inability to manage in polite society.
5	hoarding, of food and fleas and anything else they can get and keep.
6	fanaticism, the zealotry of one with nothing left but faith.
7	paranoia, watchfulness soured to endless suspicion.
8	gambling to their last coin, and then some.
9	a prickly, duel-hungry defensiveness of their last scraps of honour.
10	blasphemy, constant cursing of the higher power they blame for their misery.
11	utter contempt for the wretched few in the world they can consider beneath themself.
12	halfway-enlightened self-interest, selfishness when it suits their interests and too often when it doesn’t.
13	a voracious hunger for luxuries and the pampered life.
14	obsessive superstition, considering every sight a portent and every action a potential taboo.
15	hollowed fatalism, a bone-deep acceptance of this life as their lot.
16	bilious hatred for weakness, for comfort, for comforting.
17	a desperate urge to please and serve.
18	morbid fascination with death, the dead, and the dying.
19	universal schadenfreude, a creeping edge of sadism.
20	kleptomania.

D20	This hedge-knight carries
1	their master’s bones (what could be found of them, they were splintered so...) in a wicker bundle upon their back.
2	a pan-flute of unsettling timbre, taken from a faun they claim.
3	every tooth they ever knocked from a jaw, strung on twine about their neck.
4	a banner atop a broken pole, stained such that its heraldry seems to have changed entirely in colour and character.
5	a cheersome, motley-patched mask, used to win bread as a mummer when a sword-hand wouldn’t do.
6	a tarnished, exquisite silver spoon, which they insist on eating all their meals with.
7	a reeking wheel of cheese, mostly uneaten. They’re saving it for a good day.
8	a war medal, dented and dirty and honestly won.
9	a crutch with a sharpened and fire-hardened end. They don’t need it, yet.
10	a pouch of wooden dice.
11	a warhorn made from a wild boar’s tusk.
12	the leash of a three-legged hound.
13	a bag of foraged medicinal herbs.
14	a sealed letter they failed to deliver on time.
15	a fishing rod.
16	boards nailed together into a shield.
17	a pair of silk shoes with curled tips, too delicate to march in.
18	a clay lantern painted with scenes of warriors being devoured by beasts.
19	a vial of poison with two doses: one intended for another, and then themself.
20	a black iron helm shaped like a weeping face.