Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Konopenas

Giants with faces like dogs, tusks like boars, manes like horses, breath that smokes and steams and swirls with sparks from the fire in their throats - a monstrous people from over the edge of the known world.

In olden days they threatened to overrun the lands claimed by humanity, and were beaten back by the great Dulkharnein, who bound their might into green glass tokens.

The ones you encounter nowadays in these parts are exiles, escapees, from an empire beyond where there be dragons on maps. They love wine and boasting contests, respect bravado and feats of power. They are outlaws to their own kind and to ours - ruthless, hungry, contemptuous of the weak.

They are

Konopenas

HD: 4 AC: 15 ATK: 1d10 sword, mace, or monstrously-strong kick, or Fire Breath  SAV: 8 MOV: As giant INT: As barbarian ML: 8
No. Appearing: 1d8

Fire Breath: Once a day, a konopena can vomit a gout of flame from their burning heart, dealing 2d4 damage to everything in a 15' cone - save for half. The exterior of a konopena is not proof against fire, and they take damage from it normally - therefore they are cautious not to use their fire breath where it may burn back in their direction (unless, of course, they are drunk - a 2-in-6 chance).

If struck a critical blow by a piercing weapon their burning heart is punctured and they explode, dealing 2d6 damage to everything within 10 feet - save for half.

Green Glass Token: Every konopena carries a green glass token of an abstract, fulguritic shape - if they are separated from this token their stats become the same as an old man, and they lose all abilities. A konopena will say anything to get their token back.

Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Rock Baboons

You can hear them, across the hills and through the crags. Howling, barking, screeching, curses whose hatred cuts across language - the worst of the noises of dog and ape and man. Who they do not kill they take, and across the hills and through the crags the pleading fades, replaced by grunting and screaming.

They are not beasts. They do not fear your fire. They do not fear your voice or your weapons.

They are not men. They will take your fire and your weapons and your mind, and they will pen you and butcher you. They are

Rock Baboons

HD: 2 AC: 14 ATK: 1d6 bite and maul, or as weapon, or Stupefying Scream SAV: 7 MOV: as pissed-off chimpanzee INT: As reaction roll ML: 7
No. Appearing: 2d6 - at INT of 8 and above will be herding 2d6 stupefied humans

The reaction roll of a group of rock baboons is their current intelligence. The lower it is, the hungrier and more impulsive they'll be - higher, and they'll be open to trade and make deals, but they'll be trickier too. They will only be wielding weapons on a roll of 6 and above.

Stupefying Scream: Save or take 1d6 INT damage. The screaming rock baboon gains the same amount of INT for a week. Saving against a scream protects you from the screams of other rock baboons for a day. One of the most awful and annoying sounds you've ever heard - hearing it gives a feeling like you've just been concussed while having a bad hangover. Having your ears stopped up or suchlike while moving through rock baboon territory gives you advantage on the save against their screams, but also allows them to surprise on a 3-in-6.

Towards the Hoard of a Hundred Horrors: Meteor-Men

(Oh? Still doing this? After so long? Am I the eagle, or the mountain?)

Faster than a loosed arrow, more powerful than a siege engine, able to leap tall towers in a single bound!

They have the shapes of men but not the hearts. Within they are jelly and worms. Their delights are cruelty and subjugation, cold as the stars they fell from.

They are

Meteor-Men

HD: 8 AC: 18 ATK: 2d12 punch SAV: 15 vs. most things, 10 vs. magic MOV: Can outrun an arrow in flight, leap 100' horizontally or vertically INT: On par with most humans ML: 7
No. Appearing: 1

Also called uligoths by scholars and wizards. They prefer to humiliate, maim, and/or force into servitude rather than kill - killing you would mean acknowledging you as a threat.

They arrive at this world accompanied by a shower of mutagenic asteroids. The asteroids mutate you by exploding and embedding their shards in you.

To create a meteor freak, roll a few times on your mutation table of choice, and on top of that give them a superpower, like being permanently hasted or somesuch. Any uligoth's territory will also be home to a smattering of meteor freaks, which they uncomfortably avoid thinking about.

If you kill a meteor freak you can extract enough asteroid shards to craft 1d4 weapons. Weapons crafted from asteroids treat meteor-men's AC as 10.

D6x6 Troublous Trolls

I have done jötnar-ish trolls, as well as bridge trolls - this generator is for more typical D&D-ish trolls.

Click the button below to get your trolls:

Special thanks to Spwack for the generator generator here: meanderingbanter.blogspot.com/2018/10/automatic-list-to-html-translator-v2.html

D6	These trolls have
1	nostrils carved and scarified into shuddering trenches across their faces, and eyes that constantly weep from the pressure of their perpetually-closing tear ducts.
2	vaingloriously jewel-inlaid tusks.
3	parasitic vines embedded in their skin, leeching off their regenerative nutrients.
4	quill-tufted tails.
5	serrated bone-ridge mohawks stretching out the skin of their skulls.
6	jaws that split open down the middle like insectoid mandibles.

D6	These trolls' hides
1	are abused-looking things, bruised flesh puckering and stretched around the osteoderms of their gnarled and knobbly skeletons.
2	are mucus-membrane pink, slathered in dripping, viscous slime like a worked-up hagfish.
3	are boar-bristly, blubbery and layered and grey like a very well-fed rhinocerous.
4	are wrinkled like fingers left underwater for too long.
5	twitch with a coating of stubby, hairy-knuckled fingers.
6	are veiny tangles, red and blue and purple, rippling with every heartbeat.

D6	These trolls are
1	primordial man-shapes, pseudo-hominids, living fossils from a time before the strict delineations of species and organs and forms.
2	unfortunate sorts mutated by wandering into zones of intense positive energy.
3	proscribed elementals of the forbidden plane of flesh.
4	hosts to an abstract parasite that feeds off and prolongs their suffering.
5	hungry ghosts - gaki - who crawled out of the underworld, trapping themselves into a wheel of samsara contained in one flesh.
6	teratomas excised from the bodies that grew them and then nurtured into independent yet still-cancerous organisms in vats of alchemical serum.

D6	These trolls regenerate
1	like molting crustaceans, popping out of their own hides a little smaller and softer.
2	by melting like wax under a blowtorch, their fattened frames thinning out to restore lost flesh.
3	with amniotic fluid-filled boils that sprout around injured areas - popping the boils before they can resettle as new tissues stops the regeneration.
4	multiplicatively - adding more limbs, more flesh, until eventually they collapse under their own weight.
5	by rapidly accelerating their metabolism - they become painfully hot to the touch while regenerating, and if injured excessively will spontaneously combust from their own heat.
6	adaptively, becoming more resistant to damage sources that have previously injured them.

D6	These trolls can
1	regurgitate high-pressure hose-blasts of their hyper-corrosive stomach acid, adapted to digesting their own kind's regenerating flesh.
2	bud off little goblin-clones.
3	rapidly extend their nails into brittle spears, or their hair into entangling nets.
4	infect those exposed to their bodily fluids with a myriad of diseases - they're multi-disease reservoirs, which never kill them due to their special biology.
5	temporarily hypertrophy their muscles for a telegraphed mega-hit.
6	contort themselves down into the flayed skins of their prey as a disguise, their regenerative power keeping the skins from decomposing.

D6	From these trolls you might loot
1	a bezoar that neutralizes poison you ingest by transmuting it into a totally-random potion.
2	essential salts that can be sniffed by hirelings to supress their fear response - negating the need for morale rolls - by way of increasing the pressure on certain lobes of their brains through anomalous nervous growth.
3	a serum you can inject into animals to turn them dire and vicious.
4	their blood, which you can drink as an impromptu healing potion with a high risk of mutation.
5	an ever-lengthening matt of hair that can be woven into an endless amount of rope.
6	magical items they've embedded into their flesh as external gastroliths, using their exceptional durability to mash durable materials into an edible paste or crumble.

The Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's - Retrospective

Session Reports:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

Session 5

The Mysteries Unveiled 

This was the first game I've run in a while, and the first in a longer while that wasn't a oneshot or somesuch, that actually concluded instead of petering out.

I came up with the idea for this campaign after reading the manga Summertime Rendering, by the great Yasuki Tanaka. If you know, you know. Had I written it today, Tanaka-sensei would likely have made it into the honourable mentions of my best mangaka list.

Main takeaway: I love my boys! We had a good time.

Now for the critical part:

The scope of this game was bigger in its conception versus its execution. This is due to two factors: writing it all up - which I'll touch on again in a bit - and the difficulty in getting everyone in the group together at the same time consistently.

Originally, the scale of the campaign in terms of both timeline and number of mysteries to investigate was bigger. I intended to structure it like friend of the blog Ardent's Everlasting Summer campaign (or like the World of Horror videogame that Ardent based this campaign structure on) - a variety of seemingly-independent mysteries that culminate in a link to the overarching meta-mystery. The Branch of Mag Mell was conceived as warping physics across the island of St. Fiachra's, leading to things like a cave that contained a portal to the past (and there was to be a multi-generational household secretly composed of the same guy at different points in his subjective timeline who had an uneasy truce with the duplicate conspiracy).

I still think the time loop format would iron out a some of the potential weaknesses in a mystery game such as bad puzzles or clues - it would just need a more-robust timeline than the one I was working with.

We ended up not being able to put together weekly sessions regularly, ending up more bi-weekly. Combined with the writing issue, this made me scale things down so that we could actually finish the campaign with reasonable likelihood & in a reasonable length of time. The breakneck pacing of events in the town was a holdover from when discovering and utilizing the time-cave was intended to be a key part of solving all the mysteries, and remained convenient with the shrunken scale.

The writing issue - I dislike prep only slightly less than I dislike writing session reports. Several sessions were frantically and loosely plotted out an hour before they started. Ideally, I would go through life constantly both moderately drunk and in an adrenaline rush, but alas. This was the great weakness of myself and the campaign.

There were a few moments where having prepped visuals would have helped greatly with players visualizing the scene - such as the cavern beneath the church. An actual map of the town instead of listing points of interest would have helped with both travel times and giving the players more to work with in terms of plotting their investigation. Lack of a map also hampered the impact of the break-down of the town into anarchy - making it more of a glossed-over background event instead of requiring a change in mindset from leisurely driving around to fighting, running, or hiding between every block.

I have been watching the classic television show The X-Files, and that has given me thoughts about structuring investigation. If I were to do it again, I would compartmentalize the conspiracy more - divvying up knowledge of what exactly is going on between characters, so that there was less of a strict duplicate/non-duplicate knowledge divide, so that one interrogation, exposition, or murder wouldn't reveal the whole thing on one hand, and so that chasing a lead like the Blue Giant Crew wouldn't lead quite so nowhere.

Part of that issue with non-compartmentalization of the conspiracy is that I forgot about the character Finnigan O'Flannagan, who was meant to be the human hatchet-man of the duplicates - I will say he died as part of the mob in the house fire set by St. Fiachra's children.

I would also increase the materiality, the immediacy of the conspiracy - for example, the kidnappings were purely background events, and one could've been made into a random encounter that would have allowed the players to risk following the kidnappers to the entrance to the cave system and so on. "Who does what and where they do it at", in the immortal words of Charles Manson, to put it succinctly. Practical details. Adding more moving parts to the conspiracy, like weapon smuggling, money laundering, etc., as things happening in the world and as levers of it for the players to notice, investigate, and fuck with would also be good additions.

I would have liked to put more emphasis on the survival elements, but got the sense my players didn't really like that part. Personal difference rather than an objective flaw of the campaign I think.

A dhaoine uaisle, uaisle na hÉireann - go deo na ndeor! ^{(D'fhéadfadh sé go bhfuil an neamhbhásmhaíocht á hithe ag planda i ndáiríre)}

The Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's - The Mysteries Unveiled

Session Reports:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

Session 5

Centuries ago, a ship of Irish settlers bound for the New World ran aground on an island in the Atlantic Ocean that shouldn't have been there. The settlers identified this island as Mag Mell, the Irish Otherworld. Few survived it. One of those that did survive was the man who would come to be known as Father Donnchad. He and the other survivors repaired their ship with lumber sourced from the island and set sail again - and Donnchad brought a branch he cut from a plant there: the Branch of Mag Mell.

These settlers would in the end reach the New World, and there found the town of St. Fiachra's. 

Planted in the briny sea-cave below the island that St. Fiachra's was being built on, the Branch of Mag Mell grew into an odd sort of carnivorous plant - it ate animal matter, but at the same time excreted a vegetable imitation of the animal matter it consumed. This imitation, this duplicate, also bore the memories and personality of that which was consumed to spawn it.

Donnchad believed the Branch to be a gift from God - the fulfillment of His promise of the Resurrection. Donnchad was the first human to be consumed by the plant and replaced by a duplicate, and over the years his duplicate would convince others to be consumed as well - the duplicates were free of the diseases and degradations that afflicted their originals, and Donnchad would shape his branch of Christianity in St. Fiachra's to predispose its people into accepting this, and to identify their duplicates as themselves. The duplicates weren't entirely ageless, however - after enough time they would be compelled to take root connected to the Branch and enter an endless dream. Donnchad didn't quite avoid this fate - he figured out a way to trick the Branch into consuming his duplicated form and spit out yet another duplicate, his memories and will surviving through the centuries even as "he" died over and over again.

The town ensured its prosperity by offering this rebirth to wealthy, old, and/or sickly individuals in return for a substantial donation. The last such client taken by the town's duplicate conspiracy was Johnson Bronson, who had recently survived a brush with cancer. However - Johnson's chemotherapy-weakened immune system let him get infected by the fusarium fungus, an infection which can affect both animals and plants. When Johnson was consumed by the Branch his fusarium infection was copied over into his duplicate, and from his duplicate spread throughout the Branch and its duplicate-network. 

Not really understanding what went wrong, the duplicates convinced themselves that the Branch was weakening because it had only been fed the old and sick. They began a campaign of kidnapping young and healthy people from St. Fiachra's and the region around it, feeding them to the Branch and then destroying their duplicates so they couldn't snitch. When this didn't work and the duplicates kept getting sicker they split into two factions:

Donnchad's faction, who accepted the sickness as God's judgement and the Branch's "immortality" as a false temptation sent by the devil.

Crabatt's faction. Ingestion of processed portions of the Branch in alcohol rendered people hypnotically suggestible towards the duplicates, and the duplicates were already primed by Donnchad's branch of Christianity to accept identity theory with regard to their selves. Crabatt figured that if he got people drunk enough for long enough, he could make them think they were him, and make them think that his memories he told them about were their own - he could effectively huisheng them. Faced with the choice between giving that a shot or being stuck in their degenerating bodies, most of the duplicates who could still walk at that point in time joined Crabatt.

In the end, due to the actions of the Private EyeNTJs, Johnson Bronson was found, Donnchad killed before the sickness could get to him, and Crabatt and his cronies - or rather some people who now thought they were Crabatt and his cronies - fled St. Fiachra's to an uncertain future. 

The Seven Mysteries of St. Fiachra's - Session 5

Previously:

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

We start the session off with Fisherman Chuck - identifying himself as Old Man Rather - guiding the party into the St. Fiachra's Finest Ale brewery's parking lot. His player returned, Billy respawns in the back seat of their stolen police cruiser.

After some tense back-and-forth, the Private EyeNTJs exit their vehicle and follow Chuck into the back of the brewery, where they see a small crowd of St. Fiachran townies bearing improvised weapons & open tall boys, along with two rows of chairs facing each other - seated on one row are some sick-looking elderly St. Fiarchrans, including Mr. Crabatt, whispering to some townies tied to chairs and being force-fed beer across from them.

Panthera LeSharp - who previously had identified himself as Crabatt - crosses the room to talk to the party. The party tries to figure out what exactly is going on, and Panthera/Crabatt tries to convince them to undertake a mission for him, offering information and money. When they inquire about Panthera's wife a tear rolls down his cheek, but Crabatt's able to regain control by drinking more beer. Billy especially is interested in the implications for P/C's new existence for his identity, continuity of consciousness, etc., but P/C seems unconcerned about such philosophical things, saying that evolution is always necessary to survive.

Panthera/Crabatt wants the party to bring the elderly bodies to something beneath the church, that he says should be able to renew them. He says that to him the party's expendable - not in the sense that he wants to kill or betray them, but that he won't mind nearly as much if they fail and die compared to himself or his compatriots. He alludes to the danger of the ferals in the caverns, and that they'll be able to figure out what happened to Johnson Bronson if they go down beneath the church. When pressed on why he needs the old body renewed, he says that his bodies have different capabilities, showing the difference in their warmth and blood.

The party agrees to help, and they load the bodies of the elderly folks into their stolen police cruiser. Then they bring the bodies to the police station's jail and lock them up inside.

They speculate on Bronson's fate, suggesting that he's probably now a "moss-man". Shorty picks up a Maglite in the police station, and discuss how they will break the news to Bronson's mistress if her man has become a man of moss. They drive to the church.

At the church they roll their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire off the stairwell, and Shorty shines his new Maglite down the hole. Much brighter & more focused than their insect-repellent candle, he's able to see the size of the cavern below the church, and spies the iridescent tines of something like outstretched fingers, antlers, or bare branches poking out of the darkness deeper down.

Shorty's flashlight attracts the attention of a horde of the monsters below, which begin making their way up the stairs spiraling up around the wall of the cavern to the stairwell. The party throws a molotov to block off the stairs with its fire, then rains down the rest of their abundant supply of molotov cocktails to burn the horde in a carnival game out of hell.

The hellish conflagration of the molotovs illuminates a depression in the middle of the cavern filled with seawater flowing in from a grotto, as well as the thing growing in the center of the grotto - an iridescent, alien-looking "tree" like a spindly Rorschach blot.

They wait for the flames to burn down, then with their newly-acquired shotgun and pistol blast the few monsters of the horde that survived the flames. They find themselves on the floor of the cavern in a forest of the humanoid vegetable growths, posed like they're crucified all facing the "tree" in the cavern's center. The Private EyeNTJs find a stone bridge across the sea water-filled divot leading to a platform around the base of the "tree".

The "tree" appears sickly and withered - veins of black like in the bodies of St. Fiachra's elderly thread through it. At its base it bears two cysts, on opposite sides - sticking out of one is a man's lower body wearing a smart pair of slacks, and sticking out the other is a man's naked upper body covered in a webbing of black growths. They pull out the lower body, which separates from the "tree" with a gross sucking sound, revealing it to be dissolved or digested or somesuch from the pelvis-up.

The party goes around to the other cyst and pulls the webbing from the upper body's face, revealing it to be Johnson Bronson - their quarry, their payday.

Johnson says he can't feel his legs, that he's been stuck down there for so long he can't even remember how long it's been, and begs them for help. Walter electrocutes the crotch of his detached lower body with their taser to confirm there's no sensation.

In conversing with Johnson they learn that he chased rumours in wealthy circles that there was something in St. Fiachra's that could cure any sickness and grant longevity. He paid the town an enormous sum to allow the "tree" to consume he so he could be reborn, but something made the process fail halfway.

The party attempts to pull Johnson out of the "tree", giving him the barrel of their shotgun to hold on to, but as Billy predicted this ended poorly - with Johnson missing his lower body, his viscera spilled out onto the ground when they yanked him out. Shorty freaks out and blows Johnson's head off with the shotgun. 

They debate how they're going to prove they found Johnson to his mistress, but luckily find his wallet with his ID in his pocket. Walter sketches the scene, then they exit to the sun rising up over the sea onto the ruins of the church.

At the police station they call the hospital of a nearby city to send an ambulance for the sick elderly that they left locked in jail, then they went back to the brewery to talk to and maybe murder Panthera/Crabatt.

They ecounter P/C and a gaggle of other fellows armed with improvised weapon on the street outside the brewery. Panthera/Crabatt transfers $1,500 to their business account as payment - saying that since they didn't bring back their renewed bodies, he couldn't give them much in return. He threatens them never to talk about what happened in St. Fiachra's to outsiders, saying that Panthera isn't his only body now, and they won't recognize him if he comes to them. He claims to want to be the oldest, richest man in the world - but with the sickness of the "tree" and the loss of his 'original' body it's unclear how he'd manage that. The party schemes several methods to kill off P/C and the others in a way that won't let the people still in the brewery building escape, and eventually resolve to make some more molotovs and return.

The party spends $485 on gasoline, and $15 on assorted slurpies and mixed-soda drinks. When they return to the brewery it is deserted. They drive around town looting whatever hasn't been looted, and then leave. The town's fall to anarchy is blamed on it being cashless, and a 15-minute city.

They meet with Johnson's mistress, who is pleased to hear he's dead as that means she gets all his money. She pays them $50,000. Their financial woes solved, the Private EyeNTJs remain financially-solvent for another quarter.

The end.