Archons March On: D20x5 Men With Guns To Come In Through A Door

Monday, February 4, 2019

“When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand”

-Raymond Chandler

D20	This man appears:
1	With bandages covering his face and hands. If pulled away, the flesh underneath is revealed to be unevenly flensed.
2	Shirtless, painted with war-woad in the patterns of his ancestors.
3	Shrouded in hood and runed robes.
4	Dressed as a clown or mummer.
5	In ash-painted face and the clothes of a doctor.
6	Armed and armoured as a knight of old.
7	With a heavy beard and a cloak of musty furs.
8	In a vest of poorly-dyed wool.
9	On fire. Low-smouldering at first, growing over rounds into a blaze.
10	Swarmed by bees.
11	Dressed in the finest silks.
12	Wearing another man’s skin.
13	With a wizened face and bleeding eyes.
14	In a felt mascot costume.
15	As the mirror image (reversed on a left-right axis) of someone in the room.
16	In a flash of light and noise.
17	Looking like they just got out of a food fight.
18	In a gimp suit.
19	With each piece of clothing either too big or too small for them.
20	Butt naked.

D20	This man’s gun:
1	Is jury-rigged from bones, rusty pipes, and twine. It shouldn’t work, but does.
2	Makes a sound like a baby crying instead of a gunshot.
3	Is primitive for the setting.
4	Is advanced for the setting.
5	Shoots something other than bullets. Wasps, hard fungal pods, icicles, etc.
6	Will explode the first time he tries to fire it. It’s been deliberately sabotaged.
7	Is a rifle with a stock of aromatic hardwood.
8	Is engraved with scenes of hell and torment.
9	Will always hit someone who’s injured him first.
10	Produces an obscuring, unnatural cloud of smoke each time it’s fired.
11	Can bend the arc of its bullets around shields and cover.
12	Kills something every time it’s fired. If it doesn’t hit the person it’s shot at, it might kill a fly on the wall, or its wielder if they fumble.
13	Is entirely normal. So normal that no one will think anything’s amiss with you brandishing it until you fire it.
14	Is actually a very compact crossbow.
15	Is powered by a tightly coiled spring which must be rewound between shots.
16	Causes the corpses of those it kills to grow more bullets in putrescence cysts.
17	Can only be fired by someone who ties a lock of their hair around its trigger.
18	Is filled with blanks.
19	Is a cunningly disguises magic wand.
20	Is a custom-made revolver, with way more than six bullets in its oversized cylinder.

D20	This man came in through the door:
1	Silently, suddenly, without anyone noticing and maybe without even opening the door.
2	Growling, kicking it open.
3	Meekly, with grovelling politeness.
4	Drunkenly, stumbling.
5	Panicked, sweating, wide-eyed.
6	Coldly focused, steady-handed.
7	Bellowing with berserker rage.
8	Disguised as someone else.
9	Panting, exhausted, near-delirious from lack of sleep.
10	Accompanied by two burly companions, all full of mirth and potential for violence.
11	Dead-eyed, ready to kill and be killed.
12	Weeping, apologizing, but not hesitating to shoot.
13	On the edge of death, blood soaking the floor.
14	Preceded by a big, baying hound.
15	Followed closely by a woman with a knife.
16	Holding their gun to their head with one hand, desperately dragging it away with the other.
17	Musing whimsically about philosophy. Mostly the ethics of killing and existential despair.
18	Sleepwalking, mumbling.
19	Coldly hateful towards a single person in the room, willing to spare others if they stay out of the way.
20	Distracted, unsure, swearing up a storm.

D20	The door this man comes in through:
1	Is made of rough, unseasoned wood, shrunken smaller than the frame it’s set in.
2	Has been painted with a scaled pattern. Its handle is shaped like a snake.
3	Is a floor-to-ceiling mirror.
4	Was a trapdoor on the floor.
5	Is decorated with a porcelain mosaic of dolphins frolicking among waves.
6	Is stately mahogany with a brass knob.
7	Is paper stretched across a bamboo frame.
8	Has a handle that’s a tongue in the mouth of a laughing iron face.
9	Has broken hinges, and falls down as it’s opened.
10	Was hidden behind a painting.
11	Was the one you used to enter room.
12	Is a solid plate of smoky quartz.
13	Is abnormally small for someone of reasonable human size.
14	Is stained with mold.
15	Has a rusty knob and hinges, creaks obnoxiously every time it’s touched.
16	Is crudely carved with domestic scenes.
17	Is more of a beaded rattan mat dangling from the frame.
18	Is made to look like a living tree. Leaves brush the top of its frame and roots drag on the floor as it’s opened.
19	Sparkles with imitation jewels.
20	Wasn’t there a moment ago.

D20	In this man’s pocket is:
1	A travel-sized bible with conspiratorial notes in the margins linking passages to contemporary events.
2	A handful of spent bullets from a gun different than the one they’re carrying.
3	A ring of twisted brambles and dried flower petals.
4	A burlap mask with too many eyeholes cut into it.
5	A childish drawing of what might be a wolf.
6	Two tickets to an opera.
7	A broken pearl necklace, cracked pearls falling off the wire.
8	Gold coins from a country that doesn’t exist, minted with the face of Atlantis’s philosopher-king or Prester John or whoever else.
9	Moldy cheese and crumbling stale crackers.
10	A black bishop with a removable top. Inside is a capsule of cyanide.
11	A severed finger with a wedding ring still on its base.
12	A long knife with three names carved into the hilt, two scratched out, the one remaining yours.
13	A pamphlet of revolutionary literature.
14	A bloodstained page of sheet music any trained musician could decipher to reveal a coded message.
15	A map of the area with extensive underground tunnels shown.
16	A grinning rat that flees at the first opportunity.
17	A moth’s chrysalis.
18	The calling card of a regional noble.
19	A dented harmonica.
20	A flask of stiff liquor, spiked with something stranger.