GLOGust 2026 Challenge 6: GLOG Class: The Tetraptych-Backed Orphans

GLOGust

With special thanks to Locheil for the challenge.

The challenge for this post is "A short class with four A templates, which can be taken in any order.".

Pity the one who is alone in this world, for they have no family.

You have three siblings - a father, once, but he is dead now.

He was a painter of some renown. You are your siblings were to be his magnum opus. He was not a kind man, but making you special made up for that. There is a painting on your back, but it is not complete. It is meant to be paired with the paintings on the backs of your siblings. They are impossible paintings which never fade, with depth and hues that flesh shouldn't support.

Your siblings get whichever templates you didn't pick. The player to your left comes up with one sibling, the player to your right another, and the player across from you the last - or whatever other arrangement you can agree on.

Roll a d4 to determine which of you was responsible for your father's death. One of your siblings is friendly towards you, one is neutral, and one is hostile.

To attain another Tetraptych-Backed Orphan template you must gain sufficient XP in the usual way, and also force one of your siblings to admit defeat and surrender their share of your father's magnum opus to you.

GLOG Class: The Tetraptych-Backed Orphans
Equipment: Smock, 2d6 silver coins, easel, painting supplies
+1 to others' saves vs. your illusions for every Tetraptych-Backed Orphan template you have (because this is Many Rats on a Stick GLOG and saves are roll-under)

A, Cerulean: Blue Pigment, +3 Palette Slots

OR

A, Cinnabar: Red Pigment, +3 Palette Slots

OR

A, Smaragdine: Green Pigment, +3 Palette Slots

OR

A, Silver: Metallic Pigment, +3 Palette Slots

Pigments: Touch something with a colour matching a pigment you possess. Record the image of that something under your palette slots. Afterwards, you can paint an illusion of the image of that something in the air with your hands, expending it from your palette. This takes one round of action. To begin with, your illusions are still, silent, and can be no bigger than you are, though as you acquire more templates this will change. Your illusions last a day, or until something interacts with them enough to disrupt the pigment that composes them. Something can only be drawn on for its pigment once.

Palette Slots: A parallel inventory, but only for harvested pigments.

Δ Template - Deep Purple: 
Acquire the Cerulean and Cinnabar pigments.
If a creature fails a save against your illusions, they will be psychosomatically affected by it as if they're real, e.g. feel the resistance of an illusory wall, or take non-lethal damage from the pain of an illusory flame, and so on and so on.

Δ Template - Tealios: 
Acquire the Cerulean and Smaragdine pigments.
Your can now blow pigment away on your breath, creating an illusion anywhere within your line of sight.

Δ Template - Azure: 
Acquire the Cerulean and Silver pigments.
Your illusions can now be arbitrarily large, so long as the upper limit of their size is defined by other illusions you've painted - e.g. if you paint three illusions creating a triangle with 50-feet-long sides, you can then create another illusion within the bounds of this triangle that is as big as the triangle's area.

Δ Template - Muddling: 
Acquire the Cinnabar and Smaragdine pigments.
You can mix two or more pigments you've acquired, creating a new pigment with aspects of its component-pigments, destroying the components in the process. E.g. you could take a pigment of "bloodied bandit" and mix it with a pigment of "tree" to create a pigment of "bloodied bandit in a tree" or "bloody tree" or "bandit in a tree costume" or whatever else.

Δ Template - Gules: 
Acquire the Cinnabar and Silver pigments.
Illusions can now be animated and produce noise appropriate to what they're made in the image of.

Δ Template - Vert: 
Acquire the Smaragdine and Silver pigments.
When you create an illusion, choose one of two: Either the illusion now lasts a week, or they still last a day but being interacted with isn't enough to disrupt them anymore.

Δ Template - Primeall:
Acquire the Cerulean, Cinnabar, and Smaragdine pigments.
You can paint an illusion over a creature, and if they fail their save they will believe that they are whatever you've painted them to be until the illusion ends or another sees through the illusion and shakes them out of it.

Δ Template - Red Sun Over Paradise:
Acquire the Cerulean, Cinnabar, and Silver pigments.
When you create an illusion you can shorten its lifespan to effectively make it real. It will interact and act with the world as though it is what it is the image of. If the illusion would otherwise last a day it now lasts 1d6 rounds, and if it would last a week it now lasts 1d6 ten-minute turns.

Δ Template - Rust:
Acquire the Cerulean, Smaragdine, and Silver pigments.
If an illusion you create has eyes you can see through them, and if it has ears you can hear through them, and so on and suchlike.

Δ Template - Tinsel:
Acquire the Silver, Cinnabar, and Smaragdine pigments.
Your illusions can be imbued with the intelligence of whatever their pigment depicts, and commanded to react independently to circumstances accordingly.

Δ Template - Painted World:
Acquire all templates of the Tetraptych-Backed Orphans.

Your work is complete. You are complete.

The painting on your back can become a portal to another world. It will be a world of your own making.

The world is a pocket world, bordered by colourless empty space. It may be modeled as a pointcrawl, hexcrawl, a depthcrawl, or suchlike as you determine space to work within it.

Each pigment you're currently holding can be made into a location, creature, object, etc. within your world.

You can at any point detach the painting from your back to make it a free-standing portal, but cannot thereafter move it. You can control the passage of things through your portal, and detect when something is trying to do so.