Thursday, October 22, 2020

5 Monsters

Hungry Stone

It's a practice among peasants in some parts of the world to memorialize famines by embedding stones into riverbanks, to serve as a warning to future generations to prepare should the stone be revealed by a falling waterline.

What's less well-known is that sometimes the cruel spirits responsible for those famines are bound within the stones, to remain imprisoned and ravenous until all is dust. Sometimes those spirits learn to manipulate their rocky container, and roll out from beneath the waves to bring death once more.

HD: 6
AC: As plate + It's A Rock
Move: In a straight line, as sprinting person + 2d6 smash if someone is moved over; as walking person while turning or uphill
Attack: See Move
Morale: 10
It's a Rock: Explosives, mining implements, bludgeoning weapons (including falls onto something as hard as rock), and magic deal full damage, everything else.

Rumours about hungry stones (1d6):
1. The dust from a hungry stone'll keep you fed better than any food you could eat.
2. Humans didn't start the practice of making hungry stones. They got the idea from an older race, one that was killed by famine, but not before locking away the spirit responsible for their extinction. That thing's the master of them all.
3. If you're killed by a hungry stone you'll be trapped within it with its spirit, unable to move on until it's destroyed.
4. The elementals of the earth covet hungry stones, as they can convert the things into more of their kind.
5. Destroying a hungry stone releases the spirit within to wreak havoc in the world once more.
6. A hungry stone can eat what it crushes through pores in its surface. Feed one enough, and it'll grow so massive it sinks into the dirt, and be unable to harm anyone anymore.

Prayer-Gear Automaton

Faith can move mountains, this much is true, but it's far easier (and often more useful) for faith to move but a gear.

The prayer-gear automaton is a work of art and an artifact of faith in its own right, depicting a multi-armed guardian deity in gold-plated bronze. Programmatic scrolls roll within its chest, given prime motion by the chants of the priests which accompany it. Each is responsible for channeling their will to drive a different part of the golem.

The things were more commonly seen in past days, when monasteries and cults would feud openly against each other, and can still be found by the mortally stupid in their ruins, kept going by ghosts who've forgotten everything else.

HD: 7
AC: As plate
Move: As human
Attack: 1d6 ranged/1d6/1d6
Morale: 12

Chanting Ghost Priest
HP: 1
AC: As unarmoured
Do nothing but follow the prayer-gear automaton and chant. Can only be harmed by magic, magic weapons, and anti-ghost measures like salt or the smoke of Syrian rue.
An automaton will be accompanied by six priests. Each priest powers a limb. Disabling one leg halves its speed. Disabling both reduces its speed to a crawl. Disabling an arm has a 50% chance of removing either its ranged attack or one of its melee attacks.

Druknie

Awful spectres that lurk in treacherous waterways. Look like long-necked hippos with a chimpanzee's frame. They like watching creatures drown, the bigger the better. Cattle are often sacrificed to them to buy passage.

HD: 6
AC: As Plate + Burning Binding
Move:
Attack: 2d6 + Watery Grave
Morale: 9

Burning Binding: As spirits of water, druknies are opposed by fire to their core. Fire acts as an impassable barrier to them, and if surrounded by a ring of fire their AC drops to As Unarmoured. They can still put the fire out or ford something over it though.

Watery Grave: Druknies are not fleshly things like you or me. They're spirits, and they abide by different laws than biology does. One is that they can't kill except by drowning. The lowest they can bring you otherwise is to 0 HP.

Kempt Swidgeon

Imagine a terror bird: that skull-crushing beak, those swift and mighty legs, the awful cry. Now imagine that terror bird were totally fabulous.

You see, besides whatever other evolutionary pressures they've been subjected to, the kempt swidgeon is under immensely particular sexual selection. Only the prettiest can attract a mate, and only the prettiest territories are tolerable to prospective mates to begin with. Smelly, muddy, incompletely toothed adventurers do not a pretty territory make.

HD: 5

AC: As leather
Move: As fast horse
Attack: 1d6 eviscerating kick/1d10 decapitating beak
Morale: 9, lowered to 6 if dirtied
Smells You Before You Smell It: Surprises 3-in-6 if you haven't bathed that day. On a surprise round it will kick the nearest person off a ledge, into a fast-moving river, etc. (deals no damage but puts person kicked in unpleasant situation).

Encountered in group of 1d4:
1. Solo, surprises on 5-in-6.
2. Mated pair, if one is killed the remaining swidgeon's morale becomes 12.
3. Mated pair and chick, lowest HP swidgeon is the other two's child.
4. Rival mated pairs, groups of two swidgeons fighting each other.

Biopsy Bot

Looks like a small mechanical palm tree rolling around on a unicycular wheel. Tipping its articulated fronds are reams of medical devices of dubious cleanliness. The product of automated, self-reproducing, market algorithm-pegged healthcare infrastructure, potentially still going after thousands of years. It's got a big quota to make up to ensure its model line continues in its production facility's evolutionary obsolescence scheme.

HD: 2
AC: As chain
Move: As jogging person
Attack: 1d6 vivisection or Biopsy
Morale: 8

Biopsy: When encountered, a biopsy bot will tell you to "ASSUME THE POSITION". It doesn't matter what position you assume, all possible positions are programmed into the biopsy bot. What it does to you depends on its reaction roll result, and you will not know which result you got until it's done:

Reaction Roll for Biopsy Effect (2d6):
2: Heart Sample, the next time you sprint or engage in similar physical exertion, save vs. death or your heart stops.
3-5: Liver Sample, fail the next save vs. poison you take.
6-8: Drug Test, become intoxicated as though you just drank a bottle of wine.
9-11: Corrective Surgery, you feel in peak condition. +2 to all athletic activities for the next hour.
12: Healing, immediately heal 1d6 damage.

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Curdle

Clara Peeters - Still Life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels

Cheese. Cheese is made from milk. There’s all kinds of cheese you can make. There is hard cheese, there is soft cheese, there is cow cheese, there is goat cheese, and of course, there is god cheese.

Curdle is a city made from cheese. At least the core is. The old city. The rest only sort of looks like cheese, all flat blocky structures of yellow-orange stone, algae crusted into the streets and creeping up the walls when the baths flood.

It's laid out like a fan: the old city at the top of a hill, the Exarchs' observatory and cenobium, the garrison (and beneath all that, the tunnels stretch and the wellspring flows), then spreading out and down the hill like ribs are the waterfalls, the healing baths in increasing dilution, and up the hill climb the aqueducts bringing in water from the mountains. Nestled between those ribs are the resorts, the sanitariums, the dance-halls, delight after delight. At the bottom is a great wide drainage basin, a soggy slum for all the menial sorts who keep the baths comfortable, where the poor pilgrims wash themselves and pray to a god who no longer answers.

An aside - The Exarchate could be called a religion, it could be called a church, but never a faith. The archons have no need for faith. Look to the sky! The mangled runt of their litter is called the Sun by the ignorant and impious. By obedience alone does humanity make itself of use to the archons, make itself worth raising above the other beasts.

So: Curdle is a city made from cheese. That cheese is a god's cheese. That god was a powerful god, a mother of mountains and monsters, who nursed heroes, birthed pantheons, and devoured civilizations. That god became an annoyance for the archons, and so they struck her down in an instant.

But gods don't die like mortals do. You can stone a prophet, you can martyr a saint, you can't kill a god. 

Beneath Curdle's old city is a maze. The maze is also made from cheese. It gets softer the deeper you go, less aged, less dried. There's milk in there too. Pockets here and there, a lake vast and white if you get deep enough. It was once much larger. All of Curdle is drawn from that lake, from the coagulated bricks to the healing baths. That is Curdle's true purpose. You can't kill a god, but you can transform one, neutralize one.

The work is slow, and dangerous. Only a small slice of the maze is under the Exarchate's control. The pure, undiluted milk carries the wrath of a deposed god. Those who drink from it are transformed in body and mind. The flesh remembers antediluvian shapes. They become the Unweaned. Giant fetal mouse swarms are a big problem down there.

The maze beneath Curdle is also used by the Exarchate to store people and things too risky to let loose or destroy, because excavating labyrinthine underground facilities is expensive and they have performance metrics to meet.

So: the most visible business in Curdle is international diplomacy, espionage, conspiracy. Wealthy, influential people come from all over to partake of the baths and adjoining pleasures. It makes a convenient excuse to meet for under-the-table dealings. Most believe there's nothing to the city beyond that. This may soon change.

The leader of the Exarchate in Curdle is ambitious, ruthless, incautious, a swift riser in the ranks. Cernuiceph Praecipuria intends to accelerate the timetable of the god-neutralization project, completing it in centuries rather than millennia. For this she needs outside, deniable, and disposable help to go into the maze and turn forbidden weapons against the Unweaned and their maker. There is a real risk of either or both breaking out into the city above.

Unknown to the Exarchate, the cult of the deposed god was not entirely broken, and has not remained idle. They've gathered knowledge, instruments, supporters, and set up laboratories in Curdle's slum. Their plan is to distill the divine dregs out of the water dumped from the baths. They will use it to create an army of the Unweaned, and bring about the rebirth of their god.

Saturday, October 17, 2020

D6x6 Amazing Amazons

╔═════════════════ ೋღ☃ღೋ ════════════════╗
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Repost this if ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ you are a beautiful strong beautiful amazon~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ who don’t need no reposts~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
╚═════════════════ ೋღ☃ღೋ ════════════════╝


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

D6These amazons are all female because
1they’re the parthenogenetic clone-children of a self-obsessed alchemist.
2they’re a eusocial subspecies of homo sapiens. They’ve got some male drones, but prefer not to talk about them.
3they sacrifice any male children born to them to their patron goddess in return for blessings.
4their ancestors were subjects of an experiment to replace the Y-chromosome with a less error-prone alternative.
5they were created as the ideal guards and handmaidens for a long-dead emperor’s harem.
6they’re former succubi who rejected both their diabolic nature and their enslavement in the hierarchy of Hell.
D6These amazons see men
1as biologically obsolete, a curiosity for museums and zoos.
2as shapeless women you wouldn’t fuck.
3as deformities that fell short of being women.
4as cursed by the gods.
5as reprehensible oppressors.
6like an alien species.
D6These amazons see non-amazon women
1as weak and pitiable.
2as raw clay that can be molded into worthy kin.
3as legitimate competitors.
4as sisters in need of rescue.
5as better than men, but still below true amazons.
6as knock-offs that mock them with their mere existence.
D6These amazons live
1in the heart of a steppe beyond the operational range of any state.
2on a holy archipelago across a crashing sea. They see touching foot on the continent as shameful.
3up in the mountains at the edge of the known world.
4in a lush and misty jungle.
5atop a cluster of forested plateaus connected by bridges made from the spines of behemoths.
6in the ruins of a walled city so large it’s developed its own island ecosystem.
D6These amazons fight
1honourably with a martial art similar to pankration, and dishonourably with flintlocks.
2from horseback with lances and composite bows.
3with streaming rockets and primitive gyrojet rifles.
4in dense and unbreakable formations of warrior-sororities.
5with polearms unique to each fighter, in outfits of astounding flamboyancy.
6in tandem with tightly trained war-beasts.
D6These amazons also
1tattoo boasts on their defeated enemies’ faces.
2communicate over long distances with low-frequency throat singing.
3go about barefoot and perform divinations with their callouses.
4practice an art form sort of like bonsai, only with regenerating annelids.
5make the hilts of their blades from their ancestors’ thighbones.
6sculpt their hair with dyed wax. Only the most respected are permitted to wear red in their hair.

Friday, October 16, 2020

EL ZINE

Some people write zines, others stitch them together from group chat memes:

Wednesday, October 14, 2020

Slush Pile 3

Dungeon idea heavy one:

Fungal growths like azure hands raised in supplication fruiting from the back of the kneeled penitent

Microbiomes in the dungeon, a dozen species of centipede that exist only on this dungeon level and nowhere else in the world, oops you just squashed one

Guy with a lidless eye on a magic item, has to lick the eye regularly to keep it moist

Minidungeon - a tower figurine which appears full-size in dreams

Narco-syndicalists

Skeleton monster that gets knocked apart when damaged, bone-sections have to be individually destroyed or it pulls itself together

Las plagas monsters (kill/injure one and another pops out of/puppeteers its body)

THE HOWITZAR (Kaiser of kabooms)

Dungeon in the private collection of a brilliant artist and alchemist famed for new pigments with strange properties - the paintings are rooms

Skyline littered with charred effigies, new ones being built up by workcrews like ants in the tangle

Dungeon in bank of memory-clouding mist, rooms are clear patches, walls are permeable but fucky

Clock of the Long Now/Last Redoubt/Metropolitan Sepulchre-hybrid structure, built to hold an entire civilization in stasis through the predicted death & rebirth of the world

Demigod nursery dungeon

Dungeon that’s a wizard tower that tipped over, spilling all the potions and familiars and grimoires and whatnot together into an awful melange

Flatworld dungeon woven into a tapestry, can enter into any room but only exit off the edges, tapestry is cursed but clearing some objective in the dungeon turns it into normal enchantment for the home in which it’s hung

Valuable treasure that’s also a trap in the wrong circumstances (e.g. catalyst pellets, explode on contact with water, warning is heat up if touched with sweaty hands)

Dungeon where all things killed rise as undead hivemind

Minecraft silverfish-like monster gimmick, e.g. a few skeletons in dungeon, many in containers, skeletons can hiss to awaken others in same room

Solar deity defecating black oil
-god and oil and dust and sun become indistinguishable on the plane of indifference
-digging beneath the sand is digging beneath your own skin
-canopic jar that steals one of your organs when you open it

Dungeon that’s a giant’s game board full of magic game pieces

Grimoire so big it’s a city, inhabited by living spells, left by the first wizard

The library - supposed to be perfect - is incomplete. Its most cryptic knowledge is whispered to the librarians from cracks in the deep. The conditions of their patronage are that nothing of which they speak is recorded, and that they are amply fed.

Trench warfare as dungeon, can poke out to dive between rooms but risk getting shot/blown up

Caste of priest-shepherds tasked with herding the skeletons of sacrificed animals to the den of their god in a distant land

Universally mounted culture, believe if you set foot on the ground you are or immediately become a slave

Part of dungeon with membranous doors that only permit organic matter to pass

Magic shovel that digs to liberation

GLOG familiar class

Alien light, earthly matter is transparent to it/transmuted by it

Demons pressed like flowers into the pages of a wizard’s tome

“We appreciate the flowers when they bloom and devour their fruit when they ripen”

“The soul has no straight lines except the knife's edge”

Dungeon with floating river flowing through it

Polyreality(?) - wrote this drunk can't remember what it means - dungeon where gimmick is shifting through time/eras of dungeon/base dungeon and mirror world dungeon/etc.

Fern-based dryadish prehistoric remnant from time before trees existed

The Feudal dungeon with rooms that are micro-fiefs

Speculative evolution dungeon, slice of alien world superimposed by dimensional rift, figure out alien ecosystem & biology to navigate

Dungeon with all intangible monsters - possess, poltergeists, impassable lines of salt

"Where, then, the voice of the unheard melody?” -Wolmarus

Flightless birds are devolved remnants of advanced civilization

Save vs. morale for paranoia / fear responses: fight/flight/freeze - disgust/horror/terror

Dungeon of warren of rabbits descended from bioweapon test subjects - or magic test subjects - + rabbit predators mutated by eating them

Dungeon in and outside giant saguaro cactus - woodpecker dens - desert Odin-wannabe impaled on needles - peyote-ish bulbs ruptured by fungal infection spill hallucinatons into the air

Delta Green/Esoteric Enterpriseish hook: miraculous success with cryogenic revival, works because bodies are actually possessed by demons aided by rich people sins

River of ruins, dungeons passing by in eddies and whorls, get in and get out before it flows out to sea; alt: dungeon based on Glorantha River of Cradles

Dungeon that's a ship returned from Avalon/Land of the Ever Young - crew were gone hundreds of years, past their appointed times, forgotten by Death they rue & rot - ship overgrown by silver branch taken from the furthest shore

Lady of the Lake-ish monster, bestows magical gifts with curses/heavy drawbacks as cruel tests, corrupted by decline of chivalry

Saturday, October 10, 2020

D50 Shitty Potions from Hack Alchemists

 Because sometimes making the best of a bad thing is more fun than just getting a good thing.

Table randomator here: https://meanderingbanter.blogspot.com/2018/10/automatic-list-to-html-translator-v2.html

D50Shitty Potions
1Performance Enhancer(?): Makes your crotch hard, regardless of what you’ve got down there. Also very brittle. Avoid bumping it into things at all costs.
2Lifeswell: Grants 1d8 temporary hitpoints which can go above your normal limit. They fade at a rate of 1/day if not otherwise lost. They also make you fat. Each hitpoint gained occupies one encumbrance slot with its adiposal mass.
3Gutliner: Coats your innards with an impermeable membrane. Makes you immune to ingested poisons. And potions. And food. Last 1d4 days before being excreted in sticky sheets.
4Weaponized Emetic: Grants a one-use ability to vomit a torrent of acid for 2d6 damage, with additional 1d6 damage each turn it isn’t scraped or washed off. Awful for your breath and teeth.
5Liquid Courage: Automatically pass all morale rolls, become immune to fear, but become unable to communicate except through inarticulate yelling and must attack something or move towards attacking something each round or you compulsively attack yourself. Lasts 2d6 rounds.
6Dreamless Sleep: Removes your ability to dream. Permanently. Makes you immune to anything that would affect your dreams.
7Glowgoop: Makes anything it’s spilled on glow. Makes you glow if you drink it. Not enough to see by beyond a foot or so. Comes in several neon colour varieties.
8Mandiblizer: Makes anything it’s poured on grow a mouth, which then drinks the potion. The mouth grows a gullet up to a foot deep into the surface it grew on, to what available space allows. The mouth and its gullet last an hour before shrinking out of existence. Anything in the gullet when it disappears will be barfed out.
9Amnesium: While the potion is being digested you become unable to form new memories. Takes 1d4 hours to be digested.
10Metabolic Accelerator: Run as fast as a sprinting cheetah for 1d6 rounds, then immediately after eat a ration or take 1 point of damage for every round it lasted.
11Digestive Aid: For 1d6 days you can consume any organic material you can keep down as a ration. The taste remains unchanged.
12Essence of Rapunzel: Whatever hair you have on your head immediately lengthens by 2d20 feet (exploding).
13Mix-Up Mixer: When mixed into or consumed at the same time as another potion, causes it to (1d6): 1, gain another random potion effect; 2, multiply its duration, effect, area, etc., as appropriate, by two; 3, invert its effect; 4, affect everyone nearby as well; 5, reduce any effect to the minimum possible; 6, become a hostile slime.
14Skyswimmer: For 1d6 rounds air takes on the consistency of water for you. Moving is slower and clumsier, you can swim-fly, and breathing is impossible.
15Diskarmic Reincarnation: if you die within the next hour, crawl out from your own mouth as (1d6): 1, an ape; 2, a monkey; 3, a dog; 4, a lizard; 5, a beetle; 6, a worm.
16Stickabod: Your flesh becomes adhesive for 1d6 ten-minute turns. Anything that touches you gets stuck to you, strength check to pull away.
17Vorpal Vial: Your head detaches from your neck for an hour. You can still move your body while it’s separated. If your head and your body are together when the potion’s duration runs out, they mend back seamlessly. If they’re separate, you begin bleeding out and lose control of your body. If your head’s on a decapitated (but still living) body when the duration ruins out, it’ll merge with that one instead, and vice-versa.
18Clowning Concoction: Your bodily tissues swell with fluid and discolour until you resemble a clown. Lasts 1d6 hours.
19Thunderous Flatulence: Induces loud and frequent farting for 1d6 days.
20Drinknap: Teleports you to the place the potion was brewed.
21Radioactive Waste: You instantly develop 1d4 mutations.
22Partial Enlargement: Makes your (1d4): 1, head; 2, arms; 3, legs; 4, torso, much larger for 2d6 rounds.
23Drop Drip: Become intangible, but still affected by gravity, for one round. Drop straight down. If you re-tangify in solid matter, pop out in the nearest unoccupied space and take 1d6 damage for every 10 feet you’d have to move to get there.
24Lightning Rod: Any sort of electrical discharge nearby is attracted unerringly to you for 1d6 hours. Also works if poured on something.
25Personal Preservative: For 1d6 hours after taking it, you can’t die from hp loss unless your body is dismembered, dissolved, or otherwise destroyed. You can still be hurt and incapacitated, but you probably won’t die from it.
26Cleanliness: You can’t get dirty or smell bad for 1d6 days.
27Obsession: Become obsessed with possessing the first thing you see after drinking this potion.
28Minivision: For 1d6 ten-minute turns any object, structure, or creature larger than your fist becomes invisible to you. You can see through things that became invisible to you as if light passed through them.
29Damage Delay: Take no damage for 1d6 rounds. After the potion wears off take all damage you would have taken while it was active.
30Bloodtie: For 1d6 hours, everyone who’s taken a drink from this potion splits the damage they take evenly between them.
31Ragdoll: For 1d6 rounds take no damage from impacts but go completely limp.
32Foul Flavour: For 1d6 hours no creature with a sense of taste can bear to bite, swallow, or track you by scent. You can taste yourself though, and you are awful. Suffer constant nausea until it wears off.
33Panaceal Purge: If you’re suffering from a curse or disease, you’re immediately cured of it. However, you cough up the affliction as an independent monster that goes off to cause suffering in the world.
34Swansong: For 1d6 rounds, deal the maximum possible damage on all attacks (e.g. 6 on a d6) and take the minimum possible damage from all attacks (e.g. 1 per d6). After this time, drop to 0 hitpoints and fall unconscious.
35Flash Sweat: For 1d6 ten-minute turns, take half damage from fire and twice as much damage from cold.
36Skin of the Pangolin: Gain natural armour as chain for 1d6 ten-minute turns as scales grow across your body, but any clothes or armour you’re wearing at the time are shredded.
37Anti-Acid: Acid that burns up acid. Mutually dissolves a 5x5x5 pool of acid, or deals 2d6 damage if spilled on an acidic creature (e.g. green slime).
38Throatblock: Drinker immediately begins suffocating. Piercing the solid plug the potion forms, or the windpipe below the plug, allows breathing as normal. Offers perfect protection against inhaled poisons.
39Deathmarch: Drinker can move 50% faster over long distances (e.g. not on ordinary encounter scale) and doesn’t suffer from exhaustion. However, each day the potion is in effect, save vs. poison. On a successful save, take 1d6 damage and vomit the potion out. On a failure, take 1d6 damage and it continues to affect you. Animals that can’t vomit (like horses) automatically fail.
40Witch’s Trick: For a day after drinking, if the drinker is damaged by fire, they’re immediately immolated into a cloud of smoke. 1d6 rounds later they reform. While in smoke form they behave as normal smoke. If conditions like heavy winds cause their smoke to break up before they reform, they take 1d6 damage when they do.
41Changeling’s Bluff: If the drinker is under the effect of illusions, shapeshifting, or something similar when they drink this potion, they must save vs. poison or dissolve messily.
42Songster Serum: Drinker sings beautifully for 1d6 ten-minute turns. Drinker cannot stop singing for same period of time.
43Backwards Bottle: Drinker shrinks down and becomes trapped in potion bottle, breaking the bottle causes them to return to normal size.
44Peekaboo: Makes drinker invisible to anything they can’t see for 2d6 rounds. Regardless of duration rolled, drinker believes it lasts for full 12 rounds unless traumatically proven otherwise.
45Spherication: Turns drinker into a six-foot diameter sphere with armour as plate. Drinker can only roll slowly under their own power. Lasts 1d6 ten-minute turns.
46Intoxicating Aura: Drinker exudes dense alcoholic vapours from their pores. For 1d6 rounds, everyone within 10 feet has their successes become failures and their failures become critical failures.
47Canned Cadmus: One of the drinker’s teeth transforms into an armed and armoured warrior who follows their orders without question for 2d6 rounds before crumbling to white dust.
48Semantic Scrambler: Become immune to mind-altering effects for 1d6 ten-minute turns, but lose the ability to comprehend languages for same length of time.
49Liquid Bow: Each round it’s uncorked, it fires an arrow as a light bow in the direction of its opening. Any found liquid bow has 1d6 doses remaining.
50Infantilization: Drinker is transformed into a baby for 2d6 ten-minute turns. Anyone who sees them as a baby must save vs. magic or be compelled to protect and care for the drinker as their own child for the remaining duration.

Wednesday, October 7, 2020

D10 Goblin Goodies

 Brought to you by GLOGtober 3rd:

***

Work and pray til you can't stand,
Wear your fingers to the bones,
All to eat is hard dry scones,
That's the way in human land!
Bosses tell you good stuff banned,
Music only church choir drones,
Beat you down to cobblestones,
Take something they chop your hand!
When with that you're well and done,
Have a snack of skewered rat,
Piled on high with dingo scat!
Glug some piss until you drown,
That's the way to have real fun,
Come on down to goblin town!

***

Without further ado:

D20 Goblin Goodies

1. Cloacal Piñata: A piñata shaped like an obese donkey, made out of pubic hair. For every point of damage it receives the cloacal piñata emits ten cubic feet of liquid filth. If it receives the maximum amount of damage an attack can deal (e.g. 6 for a d6) it is destroyed and releases one hundred cubic feet of filth.

2. Paranoia Whistle: An ivory whistle shaped like the top half of a skeleton clawing at its eye sockets. Once per day can be blown within hearing range of a group belonging to the same faction. Each member of that group must save vs morale or begin to suspect and turn on each other. Best used from a hidden position as an obvious outside threat can diffuse internal tensions.

3. Malignant Manure: A stained, soggy sackcloth bag full of manure. When spread on seeds or a plant it grows to 10x its natural mature size over the course of a round, though scraggly and wretched.

4. Brattish Changeling: A crude humanoid wooden figurine. Can be given a single task which is criminal, in extremely poor taste, and/or generally and deeply anti-social, at which point it will transform into a full-sized person and perform it. If the task given does not meet those criteria the changeling will run off and cause chaos for 1d6 hours instead. If you slap someone with it the changeling will take on their appearance, otherwise it will look like your own child with an uglier partner. Single-use.

5. Micro-Gremlin Vial: A lumpy glass vial full of greenish-brown dust that smells of rust and rancid oil. If examined under a microscope the dust can be seen to be very small, dormant gremlins. When a pinch is thrown in the air it disburses into a 30x30 cloud which lingers for 1d6 rounds. Any attempt to use a mechanical device more complex than a bow in the cloud suffers a critical failure. A pinch can also be sprinkled on a device to ruin it utterly. A randomly found vial contains 1d4 pinches.

6. Moondim Jug: The goblin version of moonshine. Perhaps the worst thing that fermentation can produce. To goblins it's a potent liquor and an effective bribe. To anyone else it's a fast-acting emetic. Drink to immediately vomit out any consumed poison before it can take further effect (also undoing any damage it's already done) then become blind drunk.

7. Rabid Juice: Pulpy red juice that smells sweet and meaty. When fed to tamed or domesticated animals they become consumed with a mad rage. They'll attack any living things nearby which are not also affected by Rabid Juice, preferentially targeting their former master(s).

8. Joke Noose: A normal-seeming noose. It won't break the neck of or strangle someone hanged with it, but simply dangle them until they die of dehydration. This is considered a hilarious prank among goblins.

9. Buggy Book: A book on an eccentric, mildly interesting topic (e.g. teaching waltzes to bees, experiments in the optimal species of bird to maximize the amount of chicks you can fit in your mouth, rates of pigment fading compared between slimes scraped from cave walls) bound in warty leather. When you read a Buggy Book, save or become illiterate for a day. Anything you try to read during that time is transformed into a Buggy Book.

10. Rancidity Ray: A warty bent salamander with a purple crystal lodged in its jaws. Three times per day its tail can be squeezed to fire a technicolour ray out its mouth which spoils any food and drink it strikes , and causes creatures it hits to be stunned spending a round vomiting if they've eaten in the last day.

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

D10 Culinary Curios; or: Magic Items You Might Find In A Wizard’s Kitchen (Brought to you by GLOGtober Day 6)

1. Eye-Scooping Spoon: A tarnished silver spoon with serrated edges. On the end of its handle is a moaning face with empty eye sockets. If used to scoop out and eat an eyeball, the eater gains any special properties of that eye and its vision for one ten-minute turn.

2. Fortuning Fork: A tin fork with a spiraling handle and tines that change in number every time you look at it. The fork is able to predict the near-future impact of eating with it, and so can predict things like poison, mutation, nourishment, under-salting, and so on. Good futures cause it to gently rumble. Bad futures cause it to twist and shake in proportion to how bad of an outcome taking a bite will likely result in.

3. No Mess Napkin: A white silk napkin embroidered with a slithering glyph in gold thread. Wiping the napkin over any stains, dirt, fingerprints, and the like instantly removes them without a trace.

4. Jug of Immediate Fermentation: A clay jug painted with carousing fauns in green dresses. Anything with sufficient carbohydrate content placed in the jar immediately starts to ferment. After one round it becomes as alcoholic as beer. After two it becomes as alcoholic as wine. After three it becomes as alcoholic as vodka. After four it becomes as alcoholic as high-proof Everclear.

5. The Platter of Yltish: A broad golden platter. Its rim is molded with unsettling realism to depict entwined tapeworm-like beings with human eyes and teeth. If someone eats from the platter they become infected with demonic parasites. They gain the following traits until purged by seven days of consuming nothing but pure water and practicing austerities:
-Gain a bite attack that deals 1d6 damage and suffers no penalties for being used in a grapple
-Can only consume living flesh as rations
-Can rapidly burn through calories for a burst of speed or strength, moving twice as fast for a round or gaining advantage on their next strength check, but immediately progressing to the next stage of hunger
-If they fail a morale test or save vs. fear, they enter a ravenous frenzy and attempt to eat the nearest living thing
-Tiny worms can be seen in their blood, stool, and gums

6. The Brothcook's Spoon: A long wooden spoon. Its handle is carved with prayers to little gods of the hearth. After a round of stirring the spoon can bring a pot of water to a boil. Larger amounts of water take a proportionately longer time spent stirring to heat up. The spoon provides no special protection from heat to its user.

7. Salt of Hospitality: A pouch of salt that glows warmly from within. Sprinkling the salt on a meal binds all who share it to the laws of hospitality. They must not harm each other, must be courteous, and must reciprocate gifts and favours in kind. The first to break a law ends the binding, and is stunned for 1d6 rounds, also taking 1 point of damage for every round they've been stunned, vomiting as the salt purges the fluids and nutrients from their body. A pouch of salt of hospitality found randomly contains 1d6 doses.

8. Pot of Plentiful Stew: A cast iron pot embossed with interlocking "gyfu", "calc", and "os" runes. So long as the pot is full of water that is at least lightly simmering, the pot acts as a bag of holding. Despite its great internal volume, the pot does not take any more fuel to warm than a normal pot. Should the pot be allowed to cool all its extraspatial contents will be explosively ejected from it.

9. The Smooth As Butter Knife: A butter-knife with a void-black blade and a handle carved from glossy horn. It can cut through any non-magical material as though it were soft as butter. Does one damage on a successful hit.

10. Chalice of Chaotic Conversion: A cracked crystal chalice carved with cackling imps. Running your finger around its rim makes a sound like harsh laughter. Fluid poured into the chalice is randomly converted into one of the following things, though it does not change in appearance unless otherwise noted (1d20):
1. Poison
2. Healing potion
3. Swarm of angry wasps
4. Oil
5. Nitroglycerin
6. Holy water
7. Unholy water
8. Wine
9. Bear pheromones
10. Acid
11. Sovereign glue
12. Sea water
13. Urine
14.
Green slime
15. Pork bone broth
16. Illusory fluid which has no corporeal substance
17. Knockout juice
18. Blood
19. Potion of invisibility
20. Barbecue sauce

Monday, October 5, 2020

D100+ Noble Houses

How many y'all been playing Crusader Kings 3?

Note that a lot of the heraldry produced may not follow the laws of proper heraldry, or grammar, as I made this generator to get the hang of friend of the blog Spwack's new list to html generator here: https://slightadjustments.blogspot.com/p/generator.html rather than accurately generate heraldry.

Click the button to the left below to get your noble house, click the button to the right to show all the tables that go into making that: