Wednesday, February 27, 2019

D20x5 Ready Reapers

Underworld stuff is relatively easy to write. That is probably why there are a dozen Underworld movies.



Roll automator found here: https://meanderingbanter.blogspot.com/2018/10/automatic-list-to-html-translator-v2.html

D20This reaper appears as
1a black cloak with only grasping grey hands underneath. Anything they touch withers, anything pulled inside disappears, never to be seen in the living world again.
2a knightly flea in chitinous armour mounted atop a giant rat pocked all over with buboes.
3the first person you’ve ever known to die, invisible if you’re ignorant of mortality.
4an eroded skeleton dancing a clattery jig to the flutish sounds of wind whistling through the holes and grooves in its bones.
5a pale lady dressed in a trailing miasmal gown and sarira-studded jewelry.
6a black dog as big as a bear, its footprints and empty eye sockets sputtering plumes of ash.
7a non-Euclidean Wound Man pierced simultaneously by every possible weapon and tool.
8a cairn crawling on stony legs.
9a dirt-caked gravedigger with a vulture’s head.
10a sow-sized, kindly-eyed maggot carried about on a carpet of flies.
11a scythe-headed blackbird.
12a trio of crones joined at the neck, whose shared head is a spider. It constantly spins, weaves, and cuts its own silk.
13a hunter whose skin is tanned leather, with antlers crowning its brow. When it needs a spear or arrow it snaps an appropriately-sized tine from its antlers.
14a halfway-mummified corpse chained to something like both a clock and a breaking wheel.
15an iron maiden articulated into a humanoid form, snapping open to a spiky grin.
16some freakish deep-sea creature barely glimpsed through the gloom, all pale, dangling lights and glassy teeth.
17a giant crab whose shell is an ossuary, bones molded into crustacean shape.
18a severed head bloated and floating with corpse-gas, its greasy hair dangling in a noose-braid.
19a roadkill chimera, some crushed bits of jackal there, some whip-poor-will there, some hyena, and so on.
20a skeletal bat wrought from iron and lead, bluish light shining from within its skull and ribs.
D20This reaper primarily collects the souls of
1those who die by being crushed.
2those who die after being swallowed whole.
3those who are burned to death.
4those who die of deprivation.
5those who die by all sorts of impalement.
6those who die by falling from a height.
7those who die in several pieces.
8those who die in complete darkness.
9those who die far from home.
10those who die at the hands of a friend.
11those who die to fulfill curiousity.
12those who die of poisoning.
13those who die while seeing their own viscera.
14those who die after being resurrected.
15those who die due to incautiousness.
16those who die from a miraculous misfortune.
17those who die from a thousand cuts.
18those who die in another’s place.
19those who die from a wizard’s mistake.
20those who die clutching gold.
D20If this reaper is after you, it might let you go if
1you can outrace it.
2you can remain perfectly still for longer than it can.
3you bribe it with hell-money. The moment the bribes stop coming, it’ll come back to collect you.
4you can wrestle it into submission.
5you can provide it blackmail on a dead person in the underworld.
6you swear an oath to hunt down an undead creature of its choosing.
7you promise to clear a once-sanctified catacomb of the things that have defiled it.
8you can give it three good reasons why it should in ten seconds or less.
9you make a pact with it to arrange the deaths of three other people in the manner it prefers.
10you can wear a mourner’s veil over your face for the rest of your life to hide yourself from it.
11you can tell it a riddle it can’t solve before you get away.
12you can provide the blood-and-wine mixture necessary to propitiate it.
13you agree to sabotage its rival psychopomp’s collection quota.
14you agree and are able to take it to the living world as your familiar.
15you promise to take its position the next time you die.
16you offer up someone precious to you in your place.
17you trade it your memories of the living world.
18you gamble with more than your life as the stakes.
19you can beat it in a game of its choice.
20you can (im)mortally wound it.
D20This reaper views mortals
1with distrust, as it does anything that lives.
2as products to be packaged and delivered.
3as sources of entertaining gossip.
4as a nuisance that should all die out already.
5as irrationally attached to their bodies.
6as children to be herded for their own good.
7like a cat does mice.
8as clients for whom it is performing a commendable service.
9as waste to be recycled.
10as immortal spirits confused by their brief time clothed in flesh.
11as barely above animals.
12as admirable and tragic figures.
13as bundles of untapped potential.
14as amalgams of everything they’ve had to kill and consume to survive.
15as unwelcome intruders in the underworld.
16as the underclass of the post-life economy.
17as a chemical accident.
18as little divinities.
19as a strange sort of people, but people all the same.
20as being terribly naive about how the world really operates.
D20This reaper works for
1a necromancer, who it fetches souls for and advises against the most egregious violations of the natural order.
2one of the rebel-hells, to supply the innocent souls they so rarely get a taste of.
3heaven, in the hope of eventual ascension.
4lich-lords recruiting for their deathless wars.
5an extinct pantheon, to steal souls for their crumbling afterlife.
6an ancient emperor, to gather slaves for their work projects.
7esoteric merchants of the outer realms.
8a spirit-eating abomination, to stock its larder.
9a bodhisattva, to speed souls along the cycle of reincarnation.
10the ghost of a dragon who hoards the dead.
11a lesser archon, to render down souls into fuel for its sub-creation.
12a fallen angel seeking enough souls to bribe its way back into heaven’s good graces.
13a union of ancestral spirits pooling their resources to hire it.
14an abyssal tribunal, to bring souls to their proper judgement.
15the Fates, to archive souls and their stories.
16valkyries, to provide mooks for the einherjar to practice on.
17a necropolis attempting to undergo a population boom.
18a philosopher of the deeply buried qliphoth, who wants to study the essence of alien (to it) beings.
19the highest bidder.
20a charitable god who wishes for all the dead to have a peaceful rest.

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