D100+ Phantasmagoric Fey, or: A Generator in the Style of Unlawful Games

Like so: https://www.unlawful.games/

D2: What Is This Fey's Court?

1. Seelie - diurnal, generous, honourable, tempting

2. Unseelie - nocturnal, spiteful, deceitful, grotesque

D4: What Is This Fey's Sort?

1. Trooping - travel in long processions, usually driven by internal intrigues

2. Solitary - live alone, unpredictable, tied to natural features

3. Domesticated - cleave close to humanity, live in the household, the city, the festival and the market

4. Changeling - was raised by humans, might still think of themself as one

D6: What Is This Fey's Season?

1. Spring - flighty, verdant, amourous

2. Summer - fiery, harsh, immediate

3. Autumn - dry, witty, macabre

4. Winter - cold, deathly, patient

5. Wet - soaked, overwhelming, unstable

6. Dry - cracked, hungry, wheezy

D8: What Is This Fey's True Form (Or Is It)?

1. Willowy & strangely beautiful

2. Ogreish

3. Animalistic

4. Hunched & wizened

5. Pintsize

6. A dryadic conglomeration of physical elements

7. An airy spirit, a living wind

8. Purely sensory - a song, a perfume, a prickle up the back of the neck, or an orb of uncanny light

D10: What Is This Fey's Outward Demeanour?

1. Chivalrous

2. Tricksy

3. Bumbling

4. Predatory

5. Imperious

6. Sugary

7. Mad

8. Archetypal

9. Poetic

10. Weepy

D12: What Does This Fey Desire?

1. Sweets and treats

2. To stir up drama using mortals as playthings

3. To shake up the musty old order of courts and seasons

4. To be the authour of a story that will last until the end of time

5. To make mortals more like the fey, and the fey more like mortals

6. To complete a journey to the end of the earth

7. The humiliation of a rival

8. To make mortals properly respect and fear the dark and the wild

9. To become (in)famous

10. Even they're not really sure, but they're trying a bit of everything to figure it out

11. Children, lots of children, their own or anyone else's will do

12. To keep their kind from diminishing into mere folklore

D20: What Is This Fey's Magical Specialty?

1. Curses

2. Blessings

3. Shapeshifting

4. Illusions

5. Commanding animals

6. Scrying

7. Charms and other such enchantments of the mind

8. Laying geases on people and things

9. Crafting magic items

10. Going about invisibly, and slipping in to where they shouldn't be

11. Raising up the unforgiven dead

12. Finding secret paths, and getting others lost

13. Controlling plants

14. Manipulating the weather

15. Calling up vermin, spoiling foods, and mustering molds and mildews

16. Music that can make stones dance and lions weep

17. Altering the flow of time

18. Supernatural swordsmanship

19. Warping space

20. Inflicting sleep and weaving dreams

D100 Quirks

1. Their true name was guessed by a simple-minded farmhand, who they must now serve as a familiar.

2. Is an angel that couldn't pick a side between God and the devil, and so is stuck on Earth between them.

3. Is bound to ask a riddle of everyone they meet, and reward them if they get it right or trounce them if they get it wrong.

4. Most of their memories have been sealed away, and they've misplaced the key to unlock them.

5. Their friends have been trapped as characters in a storybook, and they're on a quest to get them out.

6. They're the heir of a mighty fey aristocrat, and they're fleeing the yoke of leadership that awaits them.

7. They're addicted to snorting dustbunnies.

8. Owes a teind of souls to Hell because of a very poorly thought-out bet.

9. Their reflection is out to get them.

10. They traded shadows with a dragon, and now their shadow looks like a dragon's and can breath out clouds of utter darkness.

11. They wear all clothing inside-out and backwards.

12. Really sucks at metaphors but insists on using them constantly.

13. They're the fairy godparent of a reckless young adventurer.

14. Their best friend is a dormouse they carry around in their pocket.

15. Can play their own hair like harp-strings

16. Mute, speaks only in the language of flowers

17. Madly in love with the moon

18. Terrified by the sound of church bells

19. Has a golden comb that can tie knots into anything. Anything.

20. Forced to speak in rhymes

21. Has a teapot with a literal tempest trapped inside it

22. Kidnapped a baby to trade away to goblins, but became too enamoured with the child and is now trying to raise them right.

23. Can't lie, except by omission and implication

24. Has an iron shackle locked around their ankle. They can't remove it themself, and are too prideful to ask for help with it.

25. Wears a hat made from the cup of an over-sized acorn.

26. Farms mushrooms as a hobby - views fairy rings as an inefficient use of space

27. Turns to stone in direct sunlight, trapped thusly until nightfall

28. Wears a broach shaped like a four-leaf clover that grants them great luck

29. Can detach and reattach their own head freely

30. Very smug about having been present for various historical events, and knowing the truth about them that wasn't recorded

31. The nastier they feel the uglier they become

32. Poses as a playwright who airs out fey scandals in popular theater

33. They're particularly magnetic, and so can find North anywhere, yet are confused by the presence of ferromagnetic materials

34. Married a witch and promised to share their immortality with their spouse, and was trapped in a birdcage for it

35. Ages backwards

36. Must accept any challenge to and wager on a fair game

37. Accidentally started a cult

38. Acts as a muse to artists

39. Regardless of their form or disguise, will always have a wild lock of white hair

40. Is compelled to flee from a crowing rooster

41. Rides a unicorn around, is very pleased with that fact, decorates it with many colourful ribbons

42. Complete sociopath, but very good actor

43. Can only be truly harmed by slapstick comedy

44. Has been sentenced to death by being crushed by eggshells for the crime of tickling foxes

45. Has made a pact with an ambitious aspiring warlock to teach them magic

46. A merchant of esoteric goods like "a mouse's footfall" and "a alder's whispers".

47. Used to know how to spin straw into gold, can still sometimes spin it into copper or silver, but other times only manages to spin it into worms and centipedes

48. Has spiders' legs for fingers, and can scramble up any surface

49. Has a taste for human flesh, but a moral objection to killing them for it

50. Has no comprehension of good or evil, instead sees beauty as good and ugliness as evil

51. Experiences boredom as physical agony, constantly seeking new entertainment as a result

52. They're cobbled together from stolen bits and pieces of other people and things, and suffer bouts of chaotic whims from their many components

53. Is obsessed with acting like a knight and finding a worthy squire

54. Breed toads that can croak every note and tone as a hobby

55. Their heart was broken many years ago and they're still trying to find all the pieces

56. Their mother is a banshee and taught them her lethal wail

57. Leaves hoofprints instead of footprints regardless of their form

58. Can place a glamour over your eyes that lets you see things as they truly are, but they'll come some time in the future to collect your eyes as payment

59. Was born from an idle wish, and is bound to fulfill it

60. Has an identical twin who is sometimes so similar to them it seems as though they share a mind, and other times seems to be their exact opposite in every way

61. Is affected by gravity in reverse, and so walks on ceilings and wears a scarf that bears them down with lead fishing weights hooked through it

62. Causes peoples' teeth to itch whenever they're near

63. Was cursed to only sleep in chimneys on beds made of soot

64. Knows when and where anyone speaks their name

65. Is pursuing an exquisite revenge against a mortal king who broke a promise to them

66. Unable to comprehend the use of any tool or device worked by human hands

67. Tramples enigmatic patterns into crop fields

68. Insists on being referred to by their elaborate and impressive-sounding but ultimately minor title every time they're personally addressed

69. Is revealed to be hollow when seen from the back

70. Can't use their magic to affect anyone who's ever seen their face, so they go about masked or veiled

71. Was exiled from the otherworld for a faux pas and is desperately trying to earn their way back

72. Carries a bag with them that is at all times cinched shut. Should anyone look inside the bag, they will be too spooked to ever speak of what they saw.

73. Wears a pair of earwigs as earrings

74. Very credulous, can be convinced that a great many ridiculous things are true with a little effort

75. Is a pro at flyting, and will engage in it at the flimsiest excuse

76. Is in fact an extraterrestrial. Their apparent magic is in fact wonderfully advanced technology.

77. Can't pass through a doorway that's warded with a horseshoe

78. Thinks paintings and statues of people really are people, and is always confused when they don't respond

79. Have underdeveloped reasoning skills, and struggle with conventional math and logic

80. They're secretly an informant for the wild hunt

81. Doesn't understand death, and has become unwitting partners with a serial killer who they believe to be a mere prankster

82. Has lived long enough that everything is as predictable and boring to them as soap operas

83. Lives halfway in a hallucinatory reality of their own imagination

84. Has wings like a butterfly's which give off magic dust. Anyone who's got that dust can fly so long as they're thinking flighty thoughts.

85. Can listen and talk through pinecones as though they were telephones

86. Wears a dress made of swarming bees

87. Must pay back insults and compliments three times over

88. Is a psychic vampire who feeds on emotions

89. Would disintegrate into mist if they ever stepped foot on holy ground

90. Has a castle in a cloud, but hasn't been able to keep up with its maintenance

91. Has plentiful piercings made from rose-thorns

92. Can be summoned by running widdershins thrice in a row around a church

93. Entertains themself by acting as children's imaginary friend

94. Flies into a rage if thanked for anything

95. Tries to keep up on modern slang, fails miserably

96. Is tasked with monitoring various crises so that a legendary hero sleeping in the otherworld can be awakened to address the biggest one

97. Enjoys tricking people into thinking they're prophesied heroes and sending them on wild goose chase quests

98. Is drunk normally, but becomes more sober the more alcohol they drink

99. Always says the opposite of what they mean

100. Will die if they're disbelieved in by mortals

D6x6 Abuzz Abeils

Getting one of these done is like pushing a sliver out of my brain.

Click the button below for your very own abeils:

Generator generator here: http://meanderingbanter.blogspot.com/2018/10/automatic-list-to-html-translator-v2.html

D6	These abeils have
1	luxuriously fluffy black-and-yellow fur.
2	elongated false-stingers worn like codpieces would be for humans.
3	psychedelic patterns made by sticking fistfuls of dry pigments to their setae like pollen would.
4	bare black exoskeletons, inlaid with gold. The more gold lines their exoskeleton has, the higher their status is.
5	iridescent blue-green exoskeletons.
6	antennae bound so they grow into intricate symmetrical symbols.

D6	These abeils communicate with humans
1	by hiring of a perfumers' guild who have noses sensitive enough to interpret their pheromones as translators.
2	using a special "mediator" caste, bred and raised to be the ideal intermediates between the two species.
3	through a highly formalized regional dance tradition that mimics their own waggle dance language.
4	only with great difficulty, through rough barter, violence, or avoidance.
5	with a simple gestural language that can be spoken regardless of its speaker's limbs or digits.
6	through addicts of the mind-altering mead fermented from their honey, who become sensitive to the abeils' collective consciousness.

D6	These abeils' hive
1	has been enticing (and sometimes coercing) human engineers and architects to come and grant it cutting-edge style and amenities.
2	has been infiltrated by parasites that mimic them near-flawlessly, giving rise to an air of paranoia.
3	is partitioned throughout by quarantine measures to prevent the spread of a fatal fungal infection.
4	was built in the ruins that a modern kingdom claims as its own heritage. That kingdom is now verging to war to push the abeils out.
5	is old, and in dire need of repairs due to the previous queen's negligence.
6	was accidentally constructed according to principles of ultraterrestrial sacred geometry, and is now lodged halfway into another plane.

D6	These abeils' queen
1	is young, inexperienced, and beset on all sides by scheming advisors.
2	sees herself as a benevolent conqueror, bringing harmony to benighted mammals.
3	is a jaded and unpleasant crone who stirs drama among her subjects for her own amusement.
4	was just assassinated, and now the hive is riven by her princesses' power struggle.
5	is a recent and zealous convert to an evangelical faith, and has alienated much of her hive's population pushing moral reforms on them.
6	is a strict micro-manager obsessed with optimizing all the hives' processes, losing sight of the greater spirit of rulership.

D6	These abeils' honey
1	is produced from meat instead of pollen, and accelerates natural healing as well as building muscle mass.
2	has a delicate yet complex taste that makes it a highly sought-after commodity.
3	can reanimate corpses interred in it as sticky mummies.
4	concentrates the stimulant compounds found in the blue flowers which grow near their hive, and can grant energy, wakefulness, and even a heart attack when consumed.
5	can be exactingly refined to make amber gemstones, which they use as diplomatic gifts.
6	is mixed with their wax to make candles that have a soporifically calming aroma.

D6	These abeils are rumoured to
1	fly out at night and kidnap men to sate their inhumanly feminine lusts upon.
2	have a great stock of gold which they mix into the royal jelly they feed their prospective queens.
3	have taught humanity the secret of city-building in an attempt to make them eusocial and hive-dwelling too.
4	be the descendants of an empress cursed for her ruinous hunger for honey-cakes.
5	be the true cause of tinnitus - the noise one hears is their distant buzzing.
6	inject their consciousnesses into those they sting, and thereby psychically replace human elites.

You Are Approached By An Upset Redditor...

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Dicember Days 11-15: Forest, Help, Food, Ooze, Snow

It's this.

11. Forest

What's the deal with this fantastical forest? (1d8):

1. Bucolic and manicured. Stalked by the velveteen playmates of a child who lived here long ago. They want you to stay and play forever,
2. Abundant in nuts, berries, and game-birds. The domain of a lordly leshy. The squirrels are his peasants, the owls and wolves his knights. Demands the respect due to one of his station, and punishes poachers terribly.
3. Metallic bark, brilliantly colourful leaves that wave without wind. Actually a species of land-coral that feeds with magnetism, catching particles from the air. Silver-scaled fish dart through the invisible currents.
4. The trees grow so high their boughs drink in the clouds. Many layers have formed, each with their own particular ecosystem. The forest floor is a lightless, root-choked abyss where predatory slimes and glow-lure anglers lurk.
5. Barren, charcoal trunks part to smoking branches. There was a fire that blazed through here, a fire that never left. It lives within the trees now, sustains them. They have no need for the sun. They eat roasted meat.
6. The forest was once an entire city created by tree shaping. Its wildlife evolved from the former pets of its inhabitants, and their feral descendants.
7. The trees grow ramrod straight, their branches growing out in crosses at perfect 90° angles. Vines entwine themselves into ropes, and creepily intelligent monkeys make their nests among them. The place was created as the ideal raw materials to build a fleet, but was taken over by pirate-ents.
8. Growing atop an ancient battlefield. Its leaves hold the bold patterns of banners, its trees sprout around frameworks of yellowed bone. After nightfall, ghosts of the desperate, deranged, and damned shriek with the wind.

12. Help

S.O.S. Aboard the S.S. Lady Susan, an oceanic encounter for modern games

The Hook

An S.O.S., coordinates in Morse code, and distorted snippets of Mariah Carey's hit 1993 song Dreamlover insert themselves into radio and TV broadcasts in your local area. The coordinates are near enough that if you had a boat you could beat anyone else there if you left now. Could be good salvage.

Or you simply come across the S.S. Lady Susan while already out on the water.

Or you're hired by Mayor Brummelstroete to make sure his mistress is really dead.

The Situation

The S.S. Lady Susan is shrouded in an unseasonable thunderstorm.

St. Elmo's fire glows on the Lady Susan's highest points.

If any metal surface on your boat makes contact with a metal surface on the Lady Susan, everything electronic on it stops working.

If you come onto the boat with any device with audio capabilities, it repeats the sounds from the first hook. Outgoing calls are replaced with the same. Video devices display a woman sprawled in a hot tub, with a green tint and heavy static.

Weird Shit

Every ten minutes spent on the Lady Susan, roll on the table below (1dX):

1. Frizzling static build-up. Electricity visibly snakes across metal surfaces. The next person to touch one take 1 damage.
2. Metal on the yacht resonates, emanating Mariah Carey music as if sung by a swarm of cicadas. Everyone on board is deafened for the next 10 minutes.
3. A random verse from the Bible is recited rapidly over the speakers in Morse code.
4. Pale green phantoms flash into existence around you for scant moments, men in suits and women in cocktail dresses, all partying hard as only people on a yacht can.
5. An abnormal wave strikes the yacht. Anyone standing must save or trip into whatever's beside them.
6. Roll 4d4, or  1-16 in a random number generator. Whichever letter that number corresponds to in the alphabet gets hit by lightning, and everyone within takes 2d6 damage. If three rooms get hit, the whole yacht starts sinking.

The S.S. Lady Susan

A: If you're in a dinghy or comparable boat you're probably only going to be able to get on from here, unless you've got a grappling hook. I'm not sure though, not a yacht expert.

B: Beneath the bar's lip are a baggy containing $500 worth of cocaine, a deck of cards, and stack of post-it notes with the numbers of Mayor Brummelstroete's various mistresses, drug dealers, and other illicit contacts written on it.

C: A stripper pole's been screwed into the table here, and faint green holograms of dollar bills float around it. Up and down the length of the pole there's stuck cutlery, a skillet, and coins. On the TV facing the table an episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is on, though visual distortions like cigarette burns cover the faces of the people on it. The TV will directly address anyone who watches it, tailoring its questions to their personal life. If they answer it with a lie, a smattering of objects stuck to the pole will shoot off in their direction like a blunderbuss.

D: A pair of flickering, pale green phantoms, one sitting on the toilet, head in its hands, the other standing and berating it in wordless angry tones. If you intrude on the bathroom, after a few moments you must save or take the place of whichever phantom you most resemble at that time. Striking either phantom makes you take 1d4 damage from electrical shock and disperses both. Breaking the scene's "script" does the same without any damage.

E: Windows broken, fish flopping around on floor, crackling with electricity. The fish are attracted to active electrical outputs and life (in that order) and attack like a swarm of piranhas. Not particularly quick or graceful, but have zombie-like tenacity. Little hole burned through roof. The bath in the room is steaming, and at its bottom is a misshapen, iridescent chunk of metal. It tingles when held, and while you've got it with you you skip any rolls on the Weird Shit table.

F: Duffel bag containing an unregistered handgun, a change of clothes, an empty syringe, an opened pack of alcohol wipes, and a few drivers licenses with different names and details but pictures of the same guy (the guy in L). The handle to operate the crane to move the boat into the water has a scorched layer of skin stuck to it.

G: Mattress turned over, slashed up. Smattering of condoms on the bedframe, stuffing and a bear trap poking out of the mattress. Examining the far wall reveals a minuscule hole drilled in it with a camera peeking behind. The camera's got footage of quite a few important political and economic figures in compromising, even criminal positions.

H: A pair of service/support staff neatly shot in the head and stashed away.

I: Corpse of a once-handsome young man set on the bed, beat to shit, forearms slit wrist to elbow, sheets crusted with blood. Photograph of him and Brummelstroete's mistress in flagrante delicto on the bedside table, their faces burned out with a cigarette. The first person to approach too close will have the corpse lunge at them and lock up in rigour mortis strangling them. In the corpse's pocket is a harmonica. Playing the harmonica will soothe the harsher effects of any phenomena or creatures so exposed.

J: Captain's room (I think, again, not a yacht expert). Stinks of burnt plastic. Totally inoperable, Levers, buttons, wheel, and any other moveable parts are fused in place. On the tables are books by Anton Lavey, Aleister Crowley, Helena Blavatsky, and the like. Spending some time searching through the books finds a listening bug (now burnt out) hidden in one, and a cut-out compartment containing rosary beads in another.

K: A one-armed skeleton with blackened strips of flesh clinging to it lounges on the couch, smoking a cigar. If someone approaches it, the skeleton will stand up, walk towards them, and point its remaining hand at them. One round later, that hand will explode, dealing 1d6 damage to everyone nearby. The skeleton will continue to approach, and the next time it detonates it's whole arm will go, dealing 2d6 damage. Its final detonation deals 3d6 damage, and totally destroys the skeleton. Towards the stairs there's a hole burned in floor, leaking steam.

L: Stocky guy with a Ukrainian accent squatting on couch, sobbing, one arm hanging limp, polyester sweater molten in places, eyes burnt shut. He believes that touching the floor will kill him, and that anyone talking is the voice of the devil tempting him into death. He's got a knife. He was one of the first people Brummelstroete hired to kill his mistress. Doesn't know much about what's going on besides the danger, saw a falling star hit the yacht, will do just about anything to escape.

Keys to the right jetski in room N are stuck in the couch cushions.

There's a line that looks a lot like a lower-case l just beneath the J. Ignore that, I didn't put that there.

M: The whole outside bridge deck area smells like overcooked pork. There's some half-finished drinks, one spiked with rohypnol. A cleaver lies on the table. Getting too close requires a save. Failure causes your arm to be taken over, which then tries to grab the cleaver and kill those around you, and then yourself. While active in this fashion the cleaver spits off green sparks. Grounding it like you would any electrical device ends the effect. The closed barbecue holds most of a human arm, charred to a crisp.

N: The jet ski on the left is messed up by electrical discharge. Keys in the ignition, but turn them and the thing goes kaboom. The one on the right's still good to go.

Examining the treadmill will reveal a gold and sapphire necklace caught in its mechanism worth $5,000.

O: Behind the counter are liquor bottles containing moaning, malformed, gelatinous homunculi. Opening or smashing them causes the homunculi to revert to the fluid they're made of. Left alone, they'll mature into mentally capable adult forms. They're worth quite a lot to the discriminating buyer. In the bathroom there's a hostile puke slime attracted to noise. Stat as a small black pudding.

P: Woman's corpse floating in the hot tub, veins faintly glowing green. Wires have grown like tree roots out of the sides and into its spine. Trying to cut or remove the wires will cause the entire yacht to lurch into a slow death-roll. Playing the harmonica from the man in room I, promising to avenge the woman on Brummelstroete, or the like will unravel the plasmatic symbiosis and allow her peace, ending all unnatural effects on the Lady Susan.

13. Food

As has been said sufficiently elsewhere, the little moments in a game can be as meaningful as the big ones - maybe it's only the little moments giving room and contrast to the big ones that the latter even can become meaningful. When going out to slay the dragon, take care not to forget what your party's eating together at camp. Here's some ideas:

The iron rations available here are (1d8):
1. Pemmican
2. Parched corn
3. Salt fish
4. Wax-sealed blocks of hard cheese
5. Dried lentils
6. Pots of brine and pickled vegetables
7. Desiccated apples, brown and wrinkled
8. Nuts and seeds

The regular rations available here are (1d8):
1. Links of hard sausages
2. Honeyed beef jerky
3. Loaves of dense bread
4. Butter and biscuits
5. Oatcakes
6. Muktuk
7. Hardboiled eggs, kept in-shell
8. Dry rice

The luxury rations available here are (1d8):
1. Gourd containing its own deliciously stewed innards, mixed with black pudding.
2. Spiced and sweetened hams
3. Mushrooms stuffed with minced meat
4. Roasted songbirds stuffed with syrup
5. Candied flowers and cream
6. Cured fish roe wrapped in breaded seaweed
7. Conches boiled in soup stock within their own shells
8. Whole suckling pig, fried in its mother's fat

14. Ooze

The cult of the God in the Keg are renowned and reviled for their generousity, spontaneity, irascibility, and over-sincerity. They are all terribly fond of drinking, and attract those terribly fond of drinking to them. The cult knows the secrets of brewing not just grains and tubers, but flesh, jewels, dreams, and stranger things still. Of these secret brews they share only a few outside the cult. The most infamous of these is ooze-booze, brewed from the endless variety of the underworld's slimes (1d10):

1. Mustard Mead: Tastes like a moment of sickening sweetness followed by a hit of unbearable spiciness. Your burps and flatulence become toxic while you're drunk on it, those who get a whiff of the same must save or take 1d6 damage and be stunned a round retching.
2. Ochre Old Ale: Tastes of citrus and a chemical you can't quite place. While drunk on it, if you would take a killing blow you can save, and if you succeed you split into two, one part dying and the other getting away at half size and half max HP.
3. Olive Ouzo: Tastes like liquorice and unwashed vegetables. While buzzed on it you gain an enhanced sense for vibrations, letting you pinpoint moving creatures within 30 feet. When trashed on it this range extends to 60 feet.
4. Green Gulp: Lumpy texture, tastes like avocado. While drunk on it your sweat becomes corrosive. While in a hot environment or after strenuous physical activity you can deal 1 damage on contact or melt through an inch of metal or wood after ten minutes of close contact.
5. Slithering Sip: Tastes like bacon and pomegranates. Odd texture, like slurping amoebic noodles. Vomit it out at a target and it'll briefly animate and seek them out. You'll immediately sober up, and if it gets in their mouth they'll get as drunk as you were off it.
6. Flareater Flagon: Tastes like caramel, sticky, leaves a tingling sensation on the tongue. While you're drunk on it, you can spit on any non-magical fire or other source of light to extinguish it instantly.
7. Snowflake Cider: Tastes like sour raspberries and stains the lips blue. You remain a comfortably cool temperature as long as you're drunk off it, and the condensation that forms on you lets you escape grapple and bonds as if you'd had a Grease spell cast on you.
8. Crystal Chicha: Refreshing as the first glass of water during a hangover, crisp and tangy. While buzzed on it you can breath underwater, but every thirty minutes doing so gets you as drunk as if you'd just had a glass of wine.
9. Stone Sato: Gritty texture. Tastes of smoked leather. While drunk on it and not moving you become camouflaged to match your environment. If passed out on it, the camouflage becomes near-perfect.
10. Black Bitter Ale: Tastes like old, over-steeped coffee. While drunk on it you become able to go totally limp and flexible. You can fit through any opening that could fit your skull, and take half damage from bludgeoning.

15. Snow

What's the snow around here like? (1d10):
1. Crust of ice on top, fluffy below
2. Brown and slushy
3. Streaked with yellow
4. Piled high but not densely, you can fall right in
5. Half-melted and crystallizing, a rainbow on the ground dazzling with all the spectrum's colours.
6. Gathered up into rough pellets like cold and grating gravel.
7. Blown up by the wind into precarious peaks and dunes.
8. Scattered with splinters of hoarfrost, almost painful to walk through.
9. Pocked with rounded dimples, a little hibernating creature placed in the center of each.
10. Molded into abstract, off-putting sculptures as if by the hands of some fey child.

10 D10 Assorted Cyberpunk Tables

D10	Cyberpunk Rations
1	Jerky cloned from samples exhumed from historical figures’ graves. Try the new Austrian-style Hitler!
2	Cricket flour porridge.
3	Unflavoured soy-derivative cubes
4	Dried spirulina snack.
5	Pigeon skewer.
6	Caloric paste with multivitamins and flavour packets.
7	Fried panda testicles (lab-grown).
8	Private military company’s MRE.
9	Expired instant ramen.
10	Bland corporate-appropriated ethnic food, produced for the cheapest cost and the lowest common denominator.

D10	Cyberpunk Advertisements
1	Reverse-targeted ad, calibrated based on aversions rather than preferences to provoke maximum offense and controversy, and therefore attention.
2	Messages from dead friends and relatives reconstructed from their social media presence.
3	Guerilla marketing therapists who assure you that their covert sponsor’s product is the treatment for your depression/anxiety/ennui.
4	Positive psychological association with their product wired directly into your brain, piggybacking on virtual reality qualia uploads.
5	Basilisk-hack corporate memes that prime you for consumption through your visual cortex.
6	Disaster relief campaigns for victims of hypercanes and geoengineering efforts, which incur a lifetime debt to the company for those they save.
7	Infrasonic jingles broadcast through the ground.
8	Those dream ads from Futurama, subliminally programmed into your subconscious mind by video screens in “public” areas. There are no true public spaces anymore. Being physically present in “public” areas is legally consenting to receiving dream ads.
9	Use your capture of academia to make the Science say that if someone does not consume your product, they are Objectively a bad person.
10	Extended time horizon hobbyist seed communities able to perfectly mimic genuine indie scenes while priming them to go hyper-consumerist mainstream and divert the diehards into another marketing effort.

D10	Cyberpunk Augmentations
1	Character Faceplate: An animatronic, synthskin-covered replacement for the front half of a person’s head. Lets people resemble their favourite stylized mascots, vocaloids, anime, and so on while retaining the ability to chew, make expressions, and breathe.
2	Greyminer: An intra-skull implant which uses the brain’s spare processing power to mine cryptocurrencies.
3	Fur-Real Therianthropomorphization: Whole-body cosmetic surgery and grafted customized biomass that makes you into a living furry, and also dependent on proprietary immunosuppressants for the rest of your likely short and agonizing life. Price jumps significantly if you go for an option other than “rainbow wolf”.
4	Untrace: Biomod that scrambles the genes of your skin and hair follicles, as well as your fingerprints, so as to minimize others’ ability to track you based on biological clues.
5	Love Deluxe: Hormonal implant that lets you adjust your feelings of attraction, affection, trust, and jealousy with a few simple sliders.
6	LDAR Supreme: Reduces the body to the bare minimum needed to support the brain, then plugs that into a total simulated reality tweaked for pure comfort.
7	Bicameral Minder: Say goobye to stress, anxiety, and poor impulse control by outsourcing control of your motor functions to life coaches, rehab centres, or whoever bought your debt.
8	The Deal Sealer: Anaesthetic needle and ampoule concealed within the palm, can strike imperceptibly with a handshake. Typically contains an inhibition-lowering drug or a slow-acting poison. It's not illegal if nobody catches you.
9	Guttergut: Budget digestive system replacement that lets you break down cellulose and other normally-inaccessible nutrients, filters grants resistance to ingested toxins.
10	The No-More-Overcompensator: Tricked-out robo-cock. Comes in sizes from big to horse.

D10	Cyberpunk Diseases
1	Printer Cough: Lung disease caused by inhalation of particulate stock from low-end 3D printers, or from printers infected by a computer virus that causes them to produce invisible clouds of the stuff.
2	GenoDie: A bioengineered virus which can be relatively easily modified to affect only people with a certain haplogroup.
3	Yumyum Lesions: Result of an international food & beverage company’s guerrilla marketing campaign. The company dumped a chemical that caused brain lesions that made those who had them experience an addictive appeal from consuming their products. Side effects include seizures, pica, and anhedonia. The company has publicly disavowed the chemical, but incidences of yumyum lesions continue to crop up.
4	Brainjack Rejection: Adverse immune reaction to an implanted brain-computer interface. Causes multisensory hallucinations and decline in mental faculties followed swiftly by death.
5	Digital Gnosticism: Mental illness caused by overuse of virtual reality from an early age. Primary symptom is identifying virtual reality as the “true world” and the physical world as some manner of false imitation beneath it.
6	Michael Butt: A transmissible skin cancer created by a trillionaire heir who read about Henrietta Lacks and thought cellular immortality would be really cool.
7	Anthropic Feline Leukemia Virus: Made the jump to humans due to an ill-advised attempt to make transgenic "catgirls".
8	COVID-35: It's still around, and worse than ever.
9	Cybernetic Atemporal Depersonalization Disorder: The result of erosion of personal identity by exposure to multiple contradictory information streams. Sufferers have great difficulty conceiving of themselves as a self consistent across time, rather than constantly reprogrammed hardware that just happens to be made of meat.
10	Vaxsickness: Complications related to shoddy vaccines rushed out to address the constant developments of total biowarfare.

D10	Cyberpunk Polities
1	Little St. James II: A mobile artificial island seastead fitted with cutting-edge anti-surveillance technology. The place to be for trillionaires and politicians seeking collusion and debauchery.
2	Red Olympus: Humanity’s only Martian colony, owned by a depraved oligarch who plays god with its captive, dependant population of technicians and sycophants.
3	The Job Club: Exclusive orbital observatory/habitat and social club. Ultra-rich members pick a person on the planet below at random, absolutely surveil every facet of their life, place obscene bets on how it will turn out. Interference is forbidden but happens constantly regardless.
4	International tech company town/city-state arcology. A sealed environment built to give a taste of pristine suburban life.
5	Anarcho-scavengers living large off the discarded trash of decades congealed into a rusty island by ocean currents.
6	Isolated and intensive psychological research facility peopled only by researchers, investors, and people who've surrendered their human rights for a pittance, allowing any number of studies to be performed on them, with amnesiac drugs applied afterwards to avoid tainting the baseline.
7	Politico-technological archipelago composed of "islands" of various technological and political forms. Exist exclusivley off tourist income, selected for novelty of their offerings.
8	Malthusian eco-fascist militia that's taken over a national park. Allowed to remain there due to sympathizers in the government and the fact that it's cheaper to let them maintain the park.
9	Immigrant mafia organization swollen in forgotten lumpenproletarian corner of society into government of miniature ethnostate.
10	Moleman mutual aid commune squatting in defunded public transit tunnels.

D10	Cyberpunk Businesses
1	Sablestone Real Estate: Build and manage everything from luxury condos to slum towns. Heavily involved with university endowment funds. Blast propaganda about how property ownership is settler-like.
2	Waifuworks Inc.: Manufacturers of relationship-mimicing AIs, sex toys, and companion robots. Headed by a digital emulation of its founder.
3	Caracara Consulting: Specialists in looting failing states. Their ruthless work ethic is masked by a bubbly executive cult of personality, their speeches peppered with self-help jargon.
4	Bluewave: Vertically-integrated company that operates desalination plants powered by its own tidal power stations. Political activists that coerce countries deprived of fresh water to adopt their agenda. Strong ties to neoliberal institutions.
5	Astromedia: Bizarre startup that sells itself as beaming cultural influence to aliens, which haven't been discovered yet. A black hole of venture capital money. Executives have the part of their brain correlated with their conscience removed.
6	IntravenUs: Provide narco-subscriptions and health insurance. Promote a flat hierarchical, family-style corporate model. CEO is a serial killer whose modus operandus is death by overdose.
7	Peaceprize Worldwide: Pharma-memetic company that deals in pacification of entire populations: chemicals in the water supply, social media guidance, and so on. It's gained notoriety for sponsoring terrorist cells in order to scare up business.
8	Retributors Experiences: Combined theatrical and special effects firm that creates scripted encounters to make you feel like a real-life superhero, to your preferred degree of realism, anti-heroism, etc.
9	Procrustes Perfections: Cosmetic alterations and elective augmentations company. Known to prey on people suffering dysphoria. All employees are contractually altered into an identical androgynous ideal.
10	Hyperborea Resources: Prospecting company that seizes claims in the artic and antarctic for trace rare earth and other such elements such as helium that are running out elsewhere. Practice a quaint, old-school nationalism, and operate off one of the few remaining old boy networks on Earth.

D10	Cyberpunk Fashions
1	Ironic gender hyperconformity.
2	Animated anti-facial recognition tattoos.
3	Brutish personalized gasmasks, clinging opaque clouds of perfume or stench chems.
4	Pop cultural nostalgia, dressing in the clothing of a past decade and only consuming media from that time. Often accompanied by cosmetic surgery to resemble celebrities famous in that time.
5	Basically naked but in augmented reality dressed in impossible videogame character outfits.
6	Ethically-sourced human leather. Taken without coercion! Preying on people made desperate by poverty does not count as coercion.
7	Neural network-created & optimized hyperstimulus clothing, maximizes attention on its wearer.
8	Anti-surveillance clothing featuring designs registered to you, which anyone holding footage of has to pay royalties for. Only works against the little Big Brothers who don't have the legal pull to ignore it.
9	Identical grey jumpsuits.
10	Democratic ultra-extravagance by way of open-source gengineering, customized spiders or silkworms constantly weaving and consuming outfits around you. Hope you're not ticklish, but if you are there's mods for that.

D10	Cyberpunk Weapons
1	Vortex gun originally loaded with hookup app guru’s personal pheromone brand, now with short-lived homecooked nerve gas.
2	3D-printed submachine gun loaded with frangible ammo for safe firing in thin-walled apartment complexes.
3	Vermiform organism that burrows into its wielder’s arm and feeds off their spare nutrients. Emerges and spits envenomated needles when that arm is flexed right. Undetectable by most scanners.
4	Micromachines applied as nail polish, can rearrange themselves into claws. Break off into scratch-wounds and break down bodies from within.
5	Super-tactical full frontal assault rifle with rotating superimposed load barrels, under-barrel grenade launcher, side-barrel mini-drone port, magnifying scope with night vision, heat vision, sonar, and video streaming, and a spring-loaded fractal ceramic bayonet.
6	A computer virus that hijacks a target’s online profiles and causes them to behave in socially-ostracizing ways that are nigh-impossible to deny as their own actions.
7	Strategic "bass boom" ultrasonic resonator that causes long-term, hard to detect damage to infrastructure, reducing entire buildings' or city blocks' quality of life well beyond the ability of most to afford repairs.
8	Designer pug with carbon nanotube-threaded musculature, reinforced bones, titanium pharyngeal jaws that can extend up to twice its body length, and a remote control rig wired to its nervous system. Indistinguishable from an ordinary, very expensive dog at a glance.
9	Autonomous robots that can construct improvised explosive devices from commonly available materials and plant them to deny access to designated areas.
10	Spider-taser that seeds area with electrified wires.

D10	Cyberpunk Policing Methods
1	Freelance bounty hunter drones piloted by children playing an augmented reality-obscured alternate reality game. The game is pitched as a way increase their civil engagement.
2	Gig economy gangstalker networks you can hire to do zersetzung on anyone at any time.
3	The classic "gated communities with private security forces that can go Guantanamo on your ass if you step on someone's lawn on the inside, lawless favelas outside".
4	You are implicated in a terrorist plot instigated by the authorities themselves and killed by an extrajudicial missile strike on domestic soil.
5	They just roll up with a death squad and shoot you, there's too much else going o to really register it happening.
6	They've got an agreement with a private prison and quotas to make, so look forward to whatever disciplinary, pharmaceutical, etc. nightmare you're bound for.
7	They enact a localized quarantine in your area, and if you leave your domicile they'll be able to stick you in a hole for however long it takes your non-existent illness to heal.
8	An occupying army coming through, convoys of armoured vehicles running over anyone too slow or disabled to get out of the way in time, barely less-than-lethal ammunition raining down on the crowds.
9	They'll stick a chip in your spine that lets them hit you with some paralyzing agony whenever.
10	Algorithms constantly observing your online activities and biometrics, and tank your credit rating and ability to work or apply for jobs if you're predicted to slide into political extremism.

D10	Cyberpunk Weather
1	Fog lit like glowing tie-dye by neon light pollution.
2	Acid rain wiping smooth past monuments it wasn’t profitable enough to remove. Bring a sturdy umbrella.
3	Heatwave pushing temperatures above the survivable human limit, streets are dead, air conditioning bills through the roof.
4	Sky bright with space-junk burning up in the atmosphere, natural drift or pushed by laser broom in a Kessler syndrome-reduction effort.
5	Superstorm pissing rain nearly sideways.
6	Air thick with gengineered locust swarms, feedstock escaped and turned globally invasive species.
7	Stratospheric sulphate clouds seeded by dirigible drones.
8	Severe, sudden cold snap spat out by fucked-up atmospheric cells. Satellites too blinded by ultra-high bandwidth telecomms wavelengths to predict.
9	Old-school animated billboards beamed right onto the clouds.
10	Rare clear, sunny day. Parks and beaches are all rented for exclusive use by influencers doing photoshoots.

Doing Names Backwards, With Devils; Or: A Method By Which One May Gain Inspiration From The Innumerable Subtypes of Monsters

A thought hit me in the shower the other day: You know how in D&D there's dozens of different kinds of devils & demons, and a lot of them are X devils or Y demons? If you're struggling for inspiration for a magic item, trap, weird device, or some other sort of object, you could do worse than flipping the name of one of those monsters around for inspiration.

The Process, Illustrated

FOR EXAMPLE:

Devil Ice: A baby's heart is a warm thing, and a child's heart is warmer still, burning with imagination, though often untempered by empathy. It is the hearts of adults that can grow cold, whether through heartbreak or despair or plain damn meanness. In the coldest of hearts a peculiar ice starts to clog the ventricles like cholesterol. That ice is treasured by witches and torturers. It absorbs hope, joy, love, and all other bright and precious things it comes into contact with. Charged with stolen light or otherwise, it is a key ingredient in many vile potions and enchantments.

Devil Chain: Take the noose a debtor used to hang himself with. Wrap around it the hair torn out by a grieving mother. Affix it all together with nails - ideally from a crucifixion, but a prison will do. That's your devil chain. Put your devil chain around someone you've proven yourself stronger than, someone you've beaten down physically, mentally, financially, whatever, and you'll have them bound. Doesn't matter if they take it off after, or you lose it. The object's just a carrier for the curse. Wherever they go, at any time, you can have them immobilized as if by invisible manacles, until such as time as you release them or the curse is broken. The Men With Eyes That Flash Like Silver Dollars make extensive use of devil chains.

Fiend Blood: One of the more popular drugs of prisoners in the depths of Carceri, as well as one of the more common causes of death. The name is only slightly euphemistic. It is not the blood of fiends, but the putrescence of dead prisoners from higher cells that slops down in gutters and cracks, crudely filtered for the most rarefied elements within: the juicy bits of planar outsiders. Hopefully you'll end up with a hit that has enough angel in it to leave you floating in bliss. Bad hits of fiend blood are so toxic they'll just kill you. Really bad hits are just toxic enough to leave you at the mercy of your fellow prisoners. Really really bad hits end up with a bit of Far Realm stuff in 'em that'll fill your head with infinite torments you couldn't name or explain if you had a billion years to try. In any case, it's the closest to an escape from Carceri most prisoners will get.

Demon Iron: The priests of holy Mount Bezelurra were zealous in their crusade against the evil spirits plaguing humanity, yet their crusade proved endless, and their mortal bodies grew weary. Banish a spirit, and it would return to harrow the next generation. Their solution was as simple and brutal as they could be. The priests prized the holy ore from their holy mountain and forged the evil spirits they captured into it, cowing them through a thousand folds of white-hot metal and a million blows from a blessed hammer. This binding proved inextricable. None of the stalkers or lurkers or sicknesses or delusions they captured ever escaped the iron of Mount Bezelurra. In the end the priests martyred their god. Their mining became rapacious, the tailings poured day and night from their mines, all to keep the world piling accolades at their feet. The priests are no more. The nails, horseshoes, keys, and so on they made with their silently shrieking malignancies within remain a historical curiousity.

Devil Bone: A dousing instrument created by soaking a sliver of goat bone in soured wine for just under a week, plucking it out on the sabbath. A correctly made devil bone is thought to be able to point towards veins of gold, diamonds, bitcoin wallets, and other such concentrations of wealth. In truth, devil bones detect murderous desire and the potential thereof. Wise users make their money as facilitators of that desire and then run far away.

Demon Shadow: An urban legend among streamers, e-sports performers, and camgirls. They say if a particular pattern of dead pixels that resembles a run-over seagull appears on your screen, you have three choices: forsake digital technology forever, forward the pattern to people who cumulatively have a larger audience that you, or be taken over body and soul by some orphaned corporate algorithm that'll use you as a puppet in some dot com boom scheme that doesn't even have the potential to take off anymore. They're two-thirds of the way right, but the truth's worse.

Devil Beard: The Agolifolgin family was as hated as they were ungroomed, which is to say very. At every turn their patriarch would cheat and steal and abuse, and every son would be worse than the last. On inheriting their office, they would all grow out that same gnarly, unwashed, untrimmed beard. The Agolifolgins, rather predictably, did not last in their title longer than four generations. Their daughters fled, their sons died in mysterious accidents, and their last patriarch was called to court and hanged for treachery against his higher-ups. All this meaning: their estate was ripe for looting, and yet, whatever treasures it may hold still lie within. The looters that have tried until now have been unaware that the Agolifolgin beard still guards Agolifolgin halls. Enter, and you will find yourself growing increasingly hirsute. First on your head - nothing to worry about. Then on your face - blinding you. Then on your body - snaring you. Finally, down your throat - suffocating you. Find a way to escape this fate, and their stolen inheritance will be yours.

Demon Whisper: Dungeoneer slang for infrasonic reverberations of the deep underground, whether produced by natural tectonic events or rifts in reality itself. These "whispers" have an insidious effect on human cognition, causing paranoia, greed, poor impulse control, and flatulence. Despite being among the least physically threatening phenomena of the depths, demon whispers are a disproportionate cause of expedition failure.

Devil Glass: According to apocryphal history, the west rose at Notre Dame was not in fact the oldest stained glass window in the church. There was another, just before it, far more beautiful, made by an artist of such talent as to never have been seen before or since. After a glance, the archbishop of Paris of the time ordered it destroyed and replaced - and then killed himself almost immediately after, to be replaced by an impostor to save face. If you believe the apocrypha, this window depicted the crucifixion of Christ in such beauty that those who beheld it would have no choice but to emulate it. A memetically viral suicide. Shards of glass, supposedly from this original window, were traded like relics throughout Europe for centuries, as common as nails claimed to be the ones that pierced Jesus's hands and feet. This trade is still allowed. This trade is considered harmless. After all, each carries only a fraction of the original work's effect.

Does this work with other kinds of monsters? Certainly not so well with giants, I can tell you that right now. Giant cloud, giant rock, giant fire, pretty one-note results with them. Other sorts of monsters do better: naga water, naga darkness, hydra frost, all fairly inspirational.

Could be more than just stuff even, could do it for geography too. Seawraith, Sea Hag, Seawolf => Sea of Wraiths, the Hag Sea, Sea of Wolves, are there a bunch of wolves in the sea they named it after?

There's no end to the elemental and other subtypes of monsters in D&D that have piled up over the years, and I think this is one way to get some good use out of them.