Alicornic Artifacts of the Abrogancian Anecumene

There once was a peaceful and prosperous kingdom called Abrogance, and the king of Abrogance was wise and just and ageless.

The means of his agelessness were the hagging childers, his best-kept secret until the kingdom's final days. And the final days of Abrogance were terrible indeed - for the king's agelessness inspired envy, and imitators, and the price of immortality is never cheap.

Abrogance was wondrous and mighty in its time, and many today claim its legacy. In all cases these claims ring farcical. The true legacy of Abrogance is clear, in the wasteland of its Anecumene, and in its artifacts of alicorn - the marvelous material of unicorn horns.

The Bacchanalian Baroness's Drinking-Flute

A drinking vessel which accentuated the poison-purging property of alicorn to the point that poisons drunk from it pushed past being neutralized to being beneficial - for example the cardiotoxic venom of the blacksnake would actually improve the health of one's heart if drank from the drinking-flute.

The baroness to whom it belonged was an infamous lush - and from the flute alcohol became a life-extending, liver-strengthening elixir of charm and confidence. In the end, she bought her own baloney and led an uprising against the king, and for this treason was put to death.

The Innocence-Devouring Dentures

A set of pearly false teeth which, when used to devour the innocent, made its user innocent in turn, restored to child-like vivacity.

The nobleman who commissioned the dentures dined daily on pure-white lambs, and died when someone snuck into his meal a piece of a goat that the village idiot had fucked.

The dentures turned black and corroded and bit their way from his corpse's jaws - they gnash through the Anecumene's earth like a rabid mole even now. 

The Brooch of the Viperine Wet-Nurse

A modest thing, as the jewelry worn in the noble manses of Abrogance went - the alicorn hidden within its design.

A gift given to one of lower station. It poisons the milk of the one who wears it - it is a poison of the soul. One weaned on the poisoned milk grows twisted, cruel, small-minded, yet long-lived and inured to all other poisons and injuries. The brooch is a weapon aimed at heirs, to ruin the houses they inherit.

The Defiler's Athame

Like the Brooch, an artifact which deliberately profaned the alicorn in its making in order to invert its properties to a terrible end.

Alicorn wards off disease - the profaned alicorn of the Athame made its wielder into a disease, their flesh and their will festering in the wounds it left, pustulent clusters of little faces leering from lacerations. The defiler for whom the Athame is named is one of the few survivors from the golden age of Abrogance - or, at least, his eyes, his smile, and his malignance survive.

The Goutuous Duke's Lancing-Needles

Alicorn can purge poison from a drinking vessel - why not, then, from any vessel?

The duke was shrewd in business and delightful in conversation, but suffered greatly from a number of illnesses. He commissioned this set of needles from a single unicorn's horn, to purge the painful fluids from his boils and joints.

The needles worked wonderfully, and soon the duke was the image of health and vigour. Virtue as well, as he began to give generous alms and weep over the evil that allowed the creation of his needles.

One day, when his creditors came, they found the duke seated on his throne, his flesh torn away to reveal his opalescent skeleton beneath, sheepishly grimacing as he offered up his viscera, the long and slippery bits sliding through the bones of his fingers. 

The Cat's Collar

In the ruins of the summer palace of the king of Abrogance there is a cat. She wears a collar inlaid with opalescent alicorn, and her coat is thick and spotless. She spends her days lazing in the sunbeams which peek through the cracked walls, and chasing the shadows of mice.

The collar protects her from all things which would do her harm, from Hunger and Time and Death. The collar would do this for no other, because it was made for the cat with love.

The cat is lonely - yes, even cats can get lonely - she has been waiting for her friend to return for a long time. The collar does not protect her from Hope.

Killer Copper Pieces: Glossgallers

Tucked away where you wouldn't expect them, grit-slicked and pearlescent, combining the vagaries of organic growth and the sensitivities of architecture - hanging orbs and onion domes, conch shell spines and chandelier tubes. There's a beauty to them that even beasts respect - no bird-droppings splatter them. These are their anchorholds.

Wet-eyed, whimpering, stretched-out faces and tongues rasping across cracked lips. Torturous posture walking on their elbows and their feet, paws clasped in prayer. They pray for themselves, and for the god they were damned with. Being damned, their prayers are worthless. They need yours.

Ruins speak to the culture they once practiced. Now they have only this, their only worthwhile pursuit.

They will lick the tendons from your heels and drag you away, drop you into the cell they've drooled for you and seal it up. With deprivation of sleep and meals and a constant channeled droning they will break you down until you hope for their salvation as much as they do. You will pray the rest of your days in the dark, food and water kissed down your throat by long, sharp tongues. They have a tremendous debt to pay.

They are

Glossgallers

HD: 2 AC: 12 ATK: 1d4 Tongue Stab (30-ft. range) SAV: 6 MOV: As three-legged dog INT: As desperate, driven person ML: 7
No. Appearing: 2d4

Tongue Stab: Their radula-tipped tongue launches out like a chameleons. Save, or roll on the table below as it pierces something important (1d6):
1. Blinded in one eye until healed.
2. Hand disabled until healed.
3. Leg disabled until healed.
4. Heart struck - triple damage.
5. Stomach - stunned for round retching, must eat additional ration that day.
6. Throat - can't speak until healed.

Killer Copper Pieces: Sceadtwains

Is the flesh stronger than steel? Perhaps, perhaps. Certainly more fearsome.

These assassin-creatures of the fleshworkers are born from an induced twinning - the twins are then made to devour each other in the womb. One twin eats the other's flesh while the other eats the first's shadow. Then, it is born - one being, two bodies, one of flesh and one of shadow.

Unactivated, they resemble the human they would have been born as, their other body resting as a shadow in the light should. Activated to kill, and they are like an over-buttered bag of popcorn - soggy, wrinkled, warped and split, innards spilled onto outtards. Their shadow-self rises as an illusory duplicate, connected to their flesh-self by a black thread that wriggles along the ground like a worm.

Their leash (besides the indoctrination from a young age which should be practiced with all assassin-creatures) is the promise of return to and maintenance of their human form, to their ordinary life. Only their creator can do this. Masterless ones exist in the margins, bundled up like lepers - honed killers pushed to the edge.

They are

Sceadtwains

HD: 3 AC: 14 ATK: As weapon SAV: 9 MOV: As human who is really good at parkour INT: As trained assassin ML: 6
No. Appearing: 1d3

Peekaboo: A sceadtwain that's just been put into kill-mode gets a 4-in-6 chance of getting a surprise round. The sceadtwain's master must be in earshot to give the signal.

Bilocation: An activated sceadtwain has two bodies - one illusory and one physical. The bodies must remain within 30 feet of each other, and are connected by a black thread along the ground. If this thread is severed, the illusory body winks out of existence and re-emerges the next round from the physical body's feet. The thread can't be severed by cutting - it is itself a shadow - a solid obstacle must completely block the connection.

A sceadtwain can switch which body is illusory and which is physical once per round as a free action, including in response to an incoming attack. If something physical is within the illusory body when they swap, the sceadtwain takes damage as if telefragged.

Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Wightsnakes

There's snakes in these here parts, horrible snakes, yellowed-off white like old bones - they don't swallow their prey live like other snakes do, they like them ripely putrid, holding the strangled corpses tenderly in their coils until they start to reek, and leak.

There's barrows too, old and haunted (of course) - and they hold the most delectable corpses of all (to the snakes). But to end up in a snake's belly is the foulest defilement of them all, so the barrows' stones and walking bones endeavour to keep the reptiles out and far away.

But sometimes a snake has its day, and seizes its well-aged barrow-corpse delicacy. Then it is reborn - the merger of ancient hero (in the classical sense) and serpentine voracity.

They are

Wightsnakes

HD: 6 AC: As armour in human form, 15 in snake form ATK: As weapon in human form, Constrict and 1d4 bite plus Haunting Venom in snake form SAV:12 MOV: As human in human form, as big snake in snake form INT: As classically-educated person ML: 8
No. Appearing: 1d3

Shapeshift: Once per round, as a free action, a wightsnake can shift between their human and snake form.

Constrict: A target hit by constrict is automatically grappled by the wightsnake. A wightsnake can constrict an already-grappled target to automatically deal 1d8 damage to them. It takes a combined strength of 30 to pry a wightsnake off a grappled target. Attacks aimed at a constricting wightsnake have a 2-in-6 chance of hitting their constricted target. A wightsnake can only constrict one target at a time.

Heroic Panoply: If you roll up a wightsnake with more than 21 HP then they've got a magic weapon. If you roll up a wightsnake with more than 26 HP they've got a magic weapon and a piece of magic armour. 

Haunting Venom: A wightsnake's venom is full of ghosts. If bit, save or roll on the table below (1d6):
1. Necrosis: Take an immediate extra 1d6 damage.
2. Hungry Ghost: Ordinary food won't sustain you - only offerings left for the dead will. Save again every day thereafter or until the poison is purged.
3. Possession: Randomly change your character to another class and personality. Save again every day thereafter or until the poison is purged.
4. Marked by the Grave: You are affected by magic as if you were a corpse rather than a living thing. Save again every day thereafter or until the poison is purged.
5. Poltergeist: A small item in the vicinity is flung at a random member of your party. Save again every hour or it happens again.
6. Fearsome Moaning: You will not be able to sleep restfully that night. Save every night thereafter until you succeed or the poison is purged.

Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Maggot Golems

There is an edict, centuries old, which declares those who eat the deadened flesh of their own kind to be cursed - that that flesh by right belongs to the scavenger-god Yeenoghu and her priests.

The accursed wallow and groan and spread across the earth as a fevered stain. Their hunger is bottomless, but it has an apex - each tithes a portion of every mouthful of choked-down putridity to the one who changed them, and to the one who changed them in turn, all the way up the chain until the collected feast gathers in the belly of the mountainous ghoul-king, in his palace of teeth and filth.

And even the king can never be satisfied. From his palace he whispers in the dreams of malefactors and maleficarum, of this unwholesome technique:

Take a carcass which vultures have not torn and hyenas have not tasted, and lay it in a structure where crows have not alit and jackals have not tread. Whisper to it in the dark for three days and three nights, eating only fistfuls of dirt and drinking only your own tears and urine.

Should everything go properly, the ghoul-king will lend a portion of his power and a maggot will spawn within the meat, inscribed with the Unspeakable Name. This maggot will spawn more, until a great white mass rises in the shape of a man.

These larvae are not given freely, not meant to be servants - this is only a ploy.

Once one reaches maturation it will moult into a usurper of the scavenger-god, and the ghouls shall glut upon the world entire.

They are

Maggot Golems

HP: 100 + The Heart of the Swarm AC: 12 + Writhing Mass ATK: 1d8/1d8 slams, or 1d4 gnawing flood (hits all in melee range automatically) SAV: 10 MOV: As ogre, or flow as wave of maggots INT: According to orders, literal-minded ML: 12
No. Appearing: 1

The Heart of the Swarm: Maggot golems do not roll for HP with HD as normal (if HD value is needed, use 8). Each maggot golem begins with 100 HP. When a maggot golem takes a hit, it loses HP as normal, and has a percentage chance of dying immediately as its core maggot is destroyed based on how much HP it has lost (e.g. if a hit brings a maggot golem down to 67 HP it then has a 33% chance of dying immediately).

Writhing Mass: Maggot golems take the minimum possible damage from human-scale weapons (e.g. 1 on a d6), plus whatever bonus damage a weapon might get from enchantment. Area of effect attacks, siege weapons, and the like do damage as normal.

No Flesh Leaves The Abattoir: Maggot golems that come across a corpse are compelled to devour it. They must remain motionless for one round per HD of the corpse, and heal 1d6 HP per round. It may attack those within range as normal.

Also, wounds dealt by a maggot golem are prone to myiasis.

The Golden Mask

I awake at the bottom of my laparotomy soup and blink the crust from my eyes - did I drink my fill, or did it evaporate around me? The problem with drinking your fill is that you never remember doing it. Regardless, goodbye horses.

🌞

Some time ago friend of the blog theisticgilthoniel asked for "freak versions of the Dawn War pantheon" - I suppose this qualifies for that.

🌞

The cosmos is roughly 3,000 years old. There are still some who would kill you for disputing this.

It is also objectively true. Since the end of the god-king Zarus and the rise of Sigil, the city of at the center of everything - since the re-Ordering of the cosmos - it has been about 3,000 years. Speaking of a "before" is fraught, as any number of scholars will tell you. The cosmos will likely not grow much older than 3,000 years - Sigil is broken, and the last days are upon us.

🌞

The foundation of every empire is energy, is control over the flow of energy - over grain and oil, sunlight transformed - over the sun itself.

Zarus's greatest coup was his seduction of the sun away from the prior Order - he persuaded the sun to wear a mask, a beautiful golden mask beaten in the shape of a human face. The nature of this seduction, as with all stories of Zarus, depends on the teller. Did he disguise himself in a scaly skin, or kidnap the sun from the sky? Did he promise the sun a place of honour in his new Order, or was he simply a better fuck than the hoary old reptiles who bathed in the sun's rays? Regardless, it is universally agreed to be more consensual than what Zarus did to the moon.

With their sun stolen, the old Order's defeat became inevitable.

🌞

The sun was given a human face, and a human name - Pelor - but it was only ever a mask.

Only the least gods are like a person. Proper gods are many persons - like stars in a constellation.

Pelor Indefatigable, an armoured warrior who bears her child the world upon her back in an endless march, fending off the rats of Long Night.

Sharp-Eyed Pelor, who strikes the iniquitous within her sight with arrows of sun-stroke.

Pelor Bank-Lounger, who shelters her children - all the people of the world - in her mouth.

Pelor Plumage-Bearer, whose peerless colours seduce starlight into a great mating ball about the earth, making the day-time.

Pelor Basilaklas, who races across the sea of Night too swiftly to be sucked down into its darkness, his magnificent crown lighting the way.

Lustrous Pelor, who sweats droplets of molten gold in his dances and grants the metal a share of his beauty and power.

Pelor Everborn, who sheds her old flesh at every dawn and thereby defeats age and death.

🌞

Woe to the conquered, for only death will end the humiliations the conqueror will heap upon you.

From out of the solar temples come the wondersome, thundersome parade-beasts, delight of children wherever they march. Dressed in hide and fur and feathers, with goofy gawking too-human eyes that seem apologetic for their own existence.

In their howdahs are the idols of god-king and sun, borne along in their marriage procession. 

🌞

This Order is broken, and things long-buried seep up through the cracks.

This Order was never perfect, and remnants lingered in the peaks and valleys and unscrubbed corners.

A starving village devours itself foot to mouth, and a great fanged and scaled hoop rolls off into the night. A tomb is cracked open to the sunlight, and warriors rouse from dreamless torpor at its warmth. A warlord's mistress gives birth to an egg, and the warlord makes himself a king with that egg at the head of his hosts, a tide of serpents slithering before them.

The Order of the Oviraptor was formed to take care of this seepage and these remnants. They are a secret order, with permission to kill who they must to remain a secret, to keep the secret of their mission. Any creature can be cruel, but hate is a thing for the warm-blooded.

🌞 

Love, too, is a mammalian trait.

The sun does not love us. The sun shines upon all, impartial. His marriage to Zarus was a thing of convenience. And Zarus is gone.

The old worshipers gather in their old ways, and new worshipers turn treacherous to the image of Man across the spectrum of dracolatry.

Here there were dragons, and here there may be dragons again.

It was only ever a mask.

Level Titles For My GLOG Classes

Level titles... remember when class levels had titles? This is that, come again:

Class: Invisible Cannibal
Template A: C.H.U.D.
Template B: Spookum
Template C: Daystalker
Template D: Vitrum Carnifex

Class: Ascended Baneposter
Template A: Memer
Template B: Hothead
Template C: Rising Fire
Template D: Masketta Man

Class: Pickle Wizard
Template A: Dilly Boy
Template B: Spearcruncher
Template C: Lactofermentator
Template D: Lord of the Brine

Class: Anon (Special thanks to Anon for the additional suggestions)
Template A: Lurker / Isekai'd Incognito
Template B: Poster / Squirmy Summoner
Template C: Blogger / Wrathful Wormiger
Template D: King of the GLOG / Paragon Pillarmancer

Class: Martial Artist
Template A: Brawler
Template B: Seeker
Template C: Warrior-Poet
Template D: Divine Fist

Class: Bloodsoulsekiro Ring Type
Template A: Scrub
Template B: Chosen Untarnishslayer
Template C: MLG
Template D: Giant Daddy

Class: Sacred Scorpion Dancer
Template A: Wretched Nymph
Template B: Spider-Eater
Template C: Gracious Sting
Template D: Poison Prince

Class: Jujutsu Sorcerer
Template A: Potential Man
Template B: Cog
Template C: Glazed
Template D: Honoured One

Class: Lich Aspirant
Template A: Corpseling
Template B: Necropolitan
Template C: Unreapable One
Template D: Sepulchral Eternal

Class: Monster Binder
Template A: Goblin Wrangler
Template B: Gnoll Handler
Template C: Manticore Rider
Template D: Dragon Tamer

Class: Brandon
Template A: Little Piggy Joe
Template B: Sleepy Joe
Template C: Awakened Joe Biden
Template D: President Joseph Robinette Biden

Class: Semiurgic Sigilist
Template A: Scribe
Template B: Cosmic Functionary
Template C: Spokesman
Template D: Heir of Zarus

Class: Heavensent Pig
Template A: Porkchopped
Template B: Lil Oinker
Template C: Light of the Sty
Template D: Celestial Boar

Class: Slasher
Template A: Serial Killer
Template B: Bloodbather
Template C: Guignol Guru
Template D: Franchise Star

Class: Action Movie Hero
Template A: Grunt
Template B: Operator
Template C: Blockbuster
Template D: Silver Screen Immortal

Class: Sword-Saint
Template A: Lotus Blossom Floating On A River Of Blood
Template B: Tiger Among Mice
Template C: The One Who Dyes The Sun Red
Template D: The Blade Whom Gods And Devils Fear

Class: Abjurer Wizard
Template A: Apprentice-Protector
Template B: Initiate of the Veil
Template C: Knight of Seals
Template D: Master of the Gate and Key

Class: Necromancer Wizard
Template A: Worm
Template B: Gravedigger
Template C: Maleficarum
Template D: Death

Class: The Most Rangerous Ranger
Template A: Wilderness Survivalist
Template B: Elf-Friend
Template C: Green Man
Template D: Beloved of the Forest-God

Class: Master of Disguise
Template A: Disguise College Drop-Out
Template B: Tricky Bastard
Template C: Costumier Supreme
Template D: Honourary Disguisey