two-dimensional predators so successful in their
hunting that they overpopulated their plane of origin and overflowed
into intersecting places.
2
victims of a magical superweapon that left them as nothing but twisted silhouettes.
3
native entites from a world of stark light and darkness, dragged here by some celestial confluence.
4
the occlusions of enchanted shadow-puppets which tore themselves free from the objects that cast them.
5
the tenebrous psychic ejecta of a terminally repressive community.
6
things of living vantablack pigment escaped from the workshop of an occult artist.
D6
These shadows' touch drains strength
1
by causing strands of muscle to agonizingly tangle and knot.
2
by sapping away the very will to exercise it.
3
by granting darkness a weight and viscosity that drags at all movement like tar.
4
with a shivery, contractive cold.
5
by inflicting acidic exhaustion in one's tissues.
6
by sharing a part of their own insubstantiality.
D6
These shadows lurk
1
in the abandoned observatory of a cabal of dark
astrologers, who foretold the future based on the umbras and eclipses of
celestial bodies rather than their light.
2
in the megalithic calendar-complex of a prehistoric civilization.
3
in the buried, tunneled refuge of a city left dry and bleached like bones in the desert.
4
in the cliffside caves of a valley so deep and narrow
that the sun only shines within it for a small fraction of every day's
noon.
5
around a nocturnal traveling circus, relying on prior suspicion on the carnies and freaks to deflect attention from themselves.
6
under the clouds of a perpetual storm, an endless dark night.
D6
These shadows can be held at bay
1
by shadow puppetry imitating their forms.
2
with a total darkness that consumes even shadows.
3
by the light of the sun, which annihilates them on illumination.
4
with a line, circle, or tossed fistful of glittering substance - gold or powdered gemstones perhaps.
5
with a bonfire big enough to singe those sheltering within its vicinity.
6
with chanted prayers to a god of light.
D6
These shadows are known to
1
be distracted by the silhouettes of wisps of smoke cast by fires of fragrant wood.
2
be burned by pure salt - as if the stuff was acid.
3
subordinate themselves to wizards with power over darkness.
4
claw out shrines of negative space in territories wherein they are powerful.
5
be confounded by riddles, so long as they are in groups - debating among themselves a while until a solution can be agreed upon.
6
sometimes convert spontaneously into glares - things
like shadows, but composed of light instead of darkness - this is
believed to occur when their ideals are incontradictorily challenged.
D6
These shadows seek
1
to destroy priests and paladins and suchlike of solar deities.
2
the incarnation of the anti-sun, who will bathe the world in darkness.
3
pilgrimage into the land of the dead, and a psychopomp who will lead them into a favourable position therein.
4
the black bile of melancholic sorts, which is narcotic to them.
5
the pieces of an obsidian calender, which when
collected will allow them to catch a ride on a black glass comet into a
void which will be paradise for their kind.
6
an ebony egg which under their tender care will hatch into a shadow-dragon whose breath will eclipse the world.
on an island off the coast, kneeling humanoid forms of dimpled fulgurite on the beaches triangulating its location.
2
atop a butte, traces of glowing pseudo-circuitry crawling across the stone.
3
in a new and wettened valley the craft carved out in its descent.
4
sinking into a bog, the animal wildlife of which is extinguishing itself in dancing hysteria.
5
in a desert created by the crashed alien craft's
impact, the dunes of particles of disintegrated matter already shifting
to cover the craft up.
6
in an evergreen forest, at the end of a lollipop-pattern impact zone of a line of toppled trees and outwards-flattened crater.
D6
This alien crash site has been found
1
by a paranoid fugitive who uses remotely-controlled drones to patrol the bounds of their booby-trapped territory.
2
by a news crew circling it in a helicopter, sure to put a weirdly political spin on the matter.
3
by a deep-state deep-cover agent who's in so deep he doesn't even consciously realize he's working for the government.
4
by a popular survivalist streamer currently broadcasting the discovery to their tens of thousands of viewers.
5
by a spells-and-crystals wiccan-type who's thinking up what sort of cult they can form around it.
6
by a bunch of guys who were camping out nearby for a bachelor party and are completely fucked up on psychedelics.
D6
The craft at this alien crash site
1
is a slatted vantablack arrowhead, a liminal otherspace of white pillars and white lights visible through the slats.
2
resembles layered pancakes - the higher the smaller -
of billowing silvery fabric, thrusting out with fraying corridors when
interaction with the outside world is needed.
3
is a tall pentagonal pyramid made out of pitted grey stone, which leaks a greasy nano-fluid from its pits.
4
is a seemingly-impossible spear of guttering green plasma that is solid to the touch.
5
is a smaragdine, shuddering quadrivalvoid with tendrils of oily ebony flesh reaching out to caress its exterior.
6
is an oblate spheroid of bismuth-esque, near-liquid
shifting metal, with a random protrusion of pipes apparently providing
both thrust to and entrance into the craft.
D6
The crew of the craft at this alien crash site
1
died soon after the craft crashed - they were more like
organs of the craft than independent organisms, and without its
holistic system they were unable to survive.
2
were already dead a while before the crash - slain by a techno-mimic that disguised itself as a key component of the craft.
3
have entered cryptobiosis to await rescue, whenever it
may come - they resemble pangolin-scaled pinecones with extruded limbs
and sensory-stalks resembling chewed bubblegum.
4
have largely survived, though injured and maimed, and
seek to hollow out humans to use as drones so that they can acquire the
materials they need to repair their craft and return to the stars -
without a corpse-drone as an intermediary they look like grasshoppers
covered in foam and bubble wrap instead of chitin, and with long, bent
arms facing forwards instead of hopping legs.
5
weren't actually in the craft, but were piloting it
remotely, via something similar to but not quite like hyper-geometric
holograms, quantum entanglement, etc. The crash rent their minds from
their distant bodies, creating a psychic & technologically-enabled
maelstrom centered on the crashed craft.
6
almost all died on impact - there is one survivor,
driven insane by contaminants in Earth's atmosphere, who's ranting in
their ultrasonic language and shooting a laser-rifle at anything that
moves. They look like a peeling, fleshy onion with bony jaws jutting out
one end, and asymmetrical thorny spines poking out for limbs.
D6
This alien crash site is contaminated
1
by pools of psycho-reactive ooze that spawn off manifestations of your fears when you get near them.
2
by scattered things like slivers of bone, which expand into impaling spikes when they detect nearby movement.
3
by Eugenic Council-approved reproductive spores, which
will cause organic being that inhale them to internally incubate clones
of the crew of the craft.
4
by heavy clouds of purpling miasma that soften and gouge holes into exposed flesh.
5
by a radioactive intelligence that glitches your tissues into growing teratomatic nodules under its control.
6
by fat parasitic worm-things that the aliens used to
refine organic compounds into fuel - be careful when excising the
things, because they can be quite explosive.
D6
If you get there fast, you might be able to loot from this alien crash site
1
a hypo-space cube, with six faces that can be depressed
to open a portal into an expanded sub-realm that's very useful for
storage.
2
a hyper-evolutionary serum which, when injected, induces rapid and universally beneficial mutations.
3
a symbiotic bud of nano-filaments that lets you not
only communicate with those you've connected to, but also draw out their
secrets and lies.
4
precious nodules of pure platinum.
5
a lump of meta-material that adjusts its physical properties according to the thoughts of the one holding it.
6
a "belt" that can be adjusted to buoy its wearer in just about any level of gravity.
made from a millstone with a widened central hole, grains of gold-dust ground into its grain.
2
a spiral of shingles or tiles like a curled-up pangolin or coiled crocodile.
3
carved from the horn of a truly dire beast.
4
a tiered cone of packed orange earth, its banks held steady by bands of black ironwood.
5
made of shards of fine, pale porcelain glued together by resinous vines.
6
an interlocked hexagon of yellow, red, blue, pink, and tan clay bricks.
D6
This wishing well lies
1
atop a high and rounded hill, emerald-green with its turf.
2
beside an acidic oasis in a desert of ash.
3
some ways up a mountain-side riven by crevasses and ice-cold streams.
4
in the middle of a heather-field ringed by pink-granite boulders.
5
on the protruding fat lip of a lake-facing cliff.
6
in a soft-floored cave behind a waterfall.
D6
This wishing well's water
1
is slightly gelatinous, and smells of saffron.
2
has veins of coppery sheen shivering and incandescing within.
3
is silvery, and pulses as though it's got a heartbeat.
4
is unclearably murky, the dark swirls within suggesting unsettling omens.
5
doesn't ripple smoothly, but rather crinkles into crystalline micro-shapes.
6
is greasy and iridescent.
D6
This wishing well's power is accessed by
1
simply drinking its water.
2
bathing in its water.
3
throwing a coin into its depths.
4
bleeding into it.
5
staring into its surface until your reflection appears, then beating your reflection into a shattering death.
6
beating the right song into its water - a song known only to sages.
D6
This wishing well grants wishes
1
by mutating and brainwashing the wisher into a form that would most closely achieve their wish.
2
via controlling minds - feed others the water of the well, and they will be compelled to fulfill your wish.
3
via the accelerated tectonic shifting of geography -
better hope your wish can be granted like that, or else you're just
gonna cause a lot of earthquakes.
4
with an instantaneous and immense release of energy -
which takes the form of a sinuous purple bolt which rockets up from its
depths - wishes which require subtle or ongoing operations are
ill-matched for it.
5
related to the removal of things and phenomena from the world - the well's water becomes like a perfect acid to these things.
6
relating to people - fulfilling them by creating simulacra of people from its water.
D6
This wishing well's power stems from
1
its contents being distilled from a marid drawn by conjurative magic from the elemental plane of water.
2
the magic seeping from the opalescent bones of an arch-wizard who was drowned in it.
3
its position at a nexus of geomantic energy-flows.
4
a legendary warrior's miraculous feat - drawing the
well up with the thrust of a spear, and thereby proving reality an
illusion before their might.
5
an ancient spring which it draws from, created in a contest between gods.
6
a meteorite that lies at its bottom, the glow of which is translated to wish-power.
transmutes the physical wounds inflicted on them into
abstract curses, of a severity commensurate to the wound. Furthermore,
they can conduct curses they bear through their blade and into those
they strike.
2
conjures up a being from the outer reaches with which
the gish has a good working relationship & extensive experience
fighting alongside. As well, the magic allows the pair to shift their
essence, acting and being acted on more as a mortal or an outsider
depending on what's convenient.
3
revolves around a prying clairvoyance that helps them
investigate enemies, study their fighting styles, and come up with the
right words to say at the right moment to provoke an enemy into making a
fatal error.
4
floods the battlefield with illusions to disrupt footing and provide cover for feints and dodges.
5
is a mild sort of necromancy, enabling them to extract
and bottle a portion of the spirit of those they defeat (framing defeat
as a sort of death), and then to drink up or spill out the bottled
spirit to take on or unleash an aspect of the defeated.
6
consists of short-ranged evocative elemental blasts used to take advantage when locking blades, and to fry those wearing armour.
D6
This gish's swordplay
1
is cruel, arrogant, and exceptional. They like to draw things out, scar and maim rather than go in for the kill from the start.
2
is amateurish, leaning too much on their magic to compensate.
3
is brutal, overpowering, more like the swinging of a sledgehammer than the conventional wisdom of blades.
4
aims to close the distance and end fights swiftly & decisively with a lunge.
5
is torturously, exhaustingly cautious, inflicting death by a thousand cuts without leaving a single opening for retribution.
6
is conventional and competent.
D6
This gish learned how to fight with sword and magic
1
from an intelligent sword, as part of the sword's ploy
to stake a claim on and consume the gish's soul and steal their body -
the gish cottoned on and tossed the sword into a deep, dark pit before
its plan could come to fruition.
2
from a half-mad vagabond who claimed to be the last of
an old and storied order of wizard-knights, and master of their
invisible, intangible castle.
3
not naturally, but rather because the gish is a gestalt
entity fused together from a warrior and a wizard who ventured into the
cold guts of the earth by an abhorsome slime that found them there.
4
from the best tutors money could buy, as a spoiled scion of wealth.
5
from elves, who raised the gish as a sort of janissary after kidnapping them as a baby.
6
after being press-ganged into joining a crew of
githyanki pirates who plyed the timeless astral plane, late escaping
only to find centuries had passed in the mortal world since their
taking.
D6
This gish carries
1
a fine cap with the feather of some great raptor stuck
through it - whoever wears the hat shall be entirely unmolested by
lesser birds. No pigeons will defecate on them or their things, no gull
will steal their food, and suchlike.
2
a well-loved cloth doll in the shape of a yellow lion.
If someone holding the doll is attacked in their sleep the doll will
leap to their defense, exploding into a tangle of claw-sharp threads.
3
a mirror of beaten silver, which looks as though it's
been beaten into shape with the point of a knife rather than a hammer.
Looking at yourself with the mirror will show the reflection of anyone
spying on you leering over your shoulder.
4
a coin with one face made of gold and the other of
lead. If flipped and landing on the ground, the coin will land gold-face
up if there's buried treasure under that spot.
5
a locket which once held a portrait - however the metal
and the vellum of the portrait and the mold which grew across the
vellum have warped together into a spongey, iridescent lump which bears a
horribly-distorted woman's visage, half in painting and half in
sculpture.
6
a rose that's bone-white from stem to flower, and can
be fed blood through its thorns to convince a bee to buzz a message into
someone's ear, or thrice the amount of blood a message would cost to
convince a bee to sting something.
D6
This gish gallops
1
on their own two feet - they lost their horse recently, in a game of dice.
2
in conversation - a real motor-mouth.
3
on the backs of nags, feeding them concoctions of
gutter-alchemy to give them the strength and endurance of a younger
horse, and buying the next one cheap when the concoctions burn them out.
4
from the seat of a wagon or carriage only - riding gives them serious motion sickness.
5
masterfully - riding backwards, hanging off the side or underneath, over rough terrain, whatever.
6
atop their trusty palomino steed "Pal'o'Mine", who is
cheeky and sometimes steals food out of bags or boots the gish into a
puddle of mud then laughs.
D6
This gish's opinion on politics
1
romanticizes peasant lifestyles & attitudes - they support any and all uprisings without question.
2
is that human beings are corrupt, and that a just society can only be created by submitting to the will of the gods.
3
is that they should be in charge of it - they're a relentless schemer & social climber.
4
is that it's pointless - that war is more honest & more decisive.
5
is that, if done properly, the masses shouldn't hear about politics at all.
6
is that it's something to be kept out of as much as possible.
a crown like entangled antlers of yellowed ivory, pocked with weeping sores.
3
quivering, asymmetrical puffball-growths studding their bodies.
4
bioluminescent splotches flashing across their skin in colours you have no name for.
5
liquid shadows that do not act like mere occlusions -
sometimes rising to coil around the one that casts them, sometimes
ranging about to lurk in the corner of your eye.
6
a growth on their "chest" or "abdomen" that vaguely
resembles a face, which they contort and throb when attempting to
communicate with humans.
D6
These fungi's Yuggoth
1
is a wormhole into a lead-grey, ultra-entropic cosmos where detritivores digest even the very fabric of space-time.
2
is a rogue planet which wandered the universe for eons -
captured by the gravity of our Sun, its light awakening the planet's
inhabitants from long crypto-biosis.
3
is an intergalactic macro-ship which they've parasitically infiltrated.
4
is itself a Great Old One, which the fungi have
effectively lobotomized & ridden from the apocalypse which consumed
their original solar system.
5
is a throbbing cyst in reality, enclosing the para-causal system that the fungi draw on for sustenance & empowerment.
6
is the spherical, three-dimensional extrusion of a
higher-dimensional super-being - these fungi are extrusions of the same,
only smaller and less aware of it.
D6
These fungi from Yuggoth can
1
implant a psychic bud into someone's spine that compels those around the implantee to gangstalk them.
2
fuse together into living portals that allow instant transportation across gulfs of space.
3
cause the bodies and souls of those who drink their ichor to drift between the waking world and the Dreamlands.
4
emit a hummadruz which degrades memories and other records of their presence.
5
forge the iridescent lagh metal which even the immortal fear.
6
discorporate themselves into a semi-sentient infection that can afflict both animals and plants for wide area control.
D6
These fungi from Yuggoth come to Earth
1
to harvest collections of brains from
seemingly-disparate individuals - sometimes animals - which when
arranged properly together share a psycho-geometrical harmony that
amplifies the fungi's more abstract technologies.
2
to observe the dimensional rifts that form where
gravity well and primitive consciousness meet, and to extract the hybrid
substances that encrust the interstitial null-space of these rifts.
3
to open the way for greater entities, and thereby gain tokens and concessions from the same.
4
to nudge human development in subtle & esoteric ways, which may not bear fruit from millions of years yet.
5
to combat the influence of their ancient enemy - the god-state of Tindalos.
6
to measure the distortions caused by the entities sleeping or bound or latent within its space-time.
D6
These fungi from Yuggoth have a base
1
on the dark side of the moon, where they are waited on
by kidnapped and immortalized Apollo mission astronauts, while those
astronauts' clones lived out their lives on Earth.
2
orbiting around the sun - they could, at any moment,
use it to provoke a solar flare that would wipe out technological
civilization.
3
at the North Pole, within the Rupes Nigra, allowing them to manipulate electro-magnetic signals across the planet and beyond.
4
beneath a cornfield somewhere in Midwestern America,
where an occult government faction swears oaths of service to them in
return for alien knowledge - the corn of the field above is infected
with a smut derived from the fungi from Yuggoth themselves.
5
off the beaten path on Mount Everest, where wealthy
supplicants come with offerings in the hope of winning favours and
blessings of warped flesh.
6
on a small, artificial island somewhere in the Pacific,
built from a genetically-modified, electro-magnetism-disrupting coral.
They are worshiped there by an eco-terrorist sect.
D6
When these fungi from Yuggoth attempt to communicate with humans
1
they ape the mannerisms of particular pop-cultural individuals.
2
they come off as psychopathically callous.
3
they prefer to use changeling-children raised by them,
who've got one brain hemisphere removed and replaced with a fungal
organelle.
4
they avoid pronouns and suchlike, suggesting they have no sense of self.
5
they tend to stumble over terms of community, family, connection, and suchlike.
6
they use the Elder Futhark, which were taught to the
ancient Scandinavians by them, therewhen cemenenting the "Nordic" alien
archetype as a cover-up of the horrid truth.
from a nation of orbital installations in the
shimmering ring of a gas giant. Those who lived above the ring duelled
with those who lived below in beautiful vacuum-dance duels to the death.
2
from the goon-cubes of a totalitarian social-democratic
world, where the satisfaction of animal needs was held to be the
highest virtue.
3
from an interstellar host bar where the hosts were grown from scratch to match the tastes and whims of particular clients.
4
from a colony of mega-aesthetes who created a brief civilization in a comet as it sublimated away in sunlight.
5
as a creche-prototype from a planet of sapiosexual geniuses, who considered him a hideous failure.
6
as the last survivor of a planet that was destroyed by a
cosmic warlord in a fit of jealous rage after being cuckolded by one of
its ultra-handsome inhabitants.
D6
This space hunk wears
1
ceremonial armour of golden plates and delicate chains that defend little and expose much.
an anti-gravitational mankini that shifts in ripples between glowing neon colour schemes.
4
a tailored, holographic suit emitted from his bow-tie.
5
a veil of living silk that coils around his body from an eyebrow-ring down to a toe-ring.
6
chrome ribbons and bangles lined with blinking LEDs.
D6
This space hunk's most hunkadelic feature
1
is his popping abs - where the abs pop, more surge up from beneath.
2
is the slender yet defined curve of his ass, each twitch powerful and purposeful.
3
are his soft, plump, pouty lips placed upon a jawscape of chiselled, angular mathematical perfection.
4
is his strong brow and piercing gaze.
5
are his mighty, meaty pecs.
6
are the sculpted curlicues of his body hair, each more fragrant than any flower.
D6
This space hunk has
1
no belly button - he hatched from an egg.
2
compound eyes like cut gemstones, and finger-long lashes that curl along chitinous segments.
3
twin heartbeats like steady drums, and a constant, cozy warmth.
4
a tail that is as strong as it is dextrous - which is very.
5
three tongues, each tipped with three prehensile lobes.
6
pincers on his hips which assist with leverage in love-making.
D6
This space hunk is
1
fond of animals & plants (or their local analogue)
and refuses to harm either. Subsists entirely on ultraviolet light and
ice. He makes really annoying sounds when he's chewing ice.
2
a huge gamer & space-sports-gambler.
3
a fanboy of Earth-culture, but gets many times, places, and people confused. Do not ask him about Emperor Hitler.
4
a hobbyist literary critic, but one who's actually good and not like one who just gives a synopsis and their sentiments.
5
seeking a fellow hunk to merge eternally with, so that
the virtuous cycling of their yang energy will birth a new and vibrant
star.
6
the lead guitar in a space-rock band which has never received any allegations of anything untoward.
D6
This space hunk
1
ejaculates puffs of glittering stardust - don't get this in your eyes!!
2
has euphoric sweat that gives a nice buzz.
3
is mildly telepathic, and can share sensations with those he touches.
4
is biologically incapable of feeling possessive of someone.
5
can do that E.T. thing where he can make a part of him
glow and heal minor injuries but instead of the tip of his finger it's
his penis.
6
doesn't sleep, and must regularly extract chemo-fluid
from a gland instead. Drinking this fluid lets you experience the dreams
he didn't have.
