with panels of stained redwood carved with intruiging mythical figures.
2
with embossed plates of verdigrised brass.
3
in smaragdine dragon-scale, the tome eternally warmed by the trace of fire-made-flesh.
4
with spiders' silk, wefted through with the jewel-like husks of the spiders that wove it.
5
with tartan cloth in the pattern of its authour's clan.
6
in black velvet inlaid with fractal patterns of gold leaf.
7
in some alchemical material that seems halfway between ceramic and steel.
8
in a colourful patchwork of leering, stitched-together imp faces.
9
with corded zebra-leather.
10
in blue-white crystalline origami.
11
in layers of delicate silver chains.
12
with thickly-laminated autumn leaves.
13
with thin, geometrical chunks of green marble, interlinked like the pieces of a puzzle-box.
14
with slabs of teeth lumped together by a pale fungus like tempeh.
15
with rounded slats of yellowed bones, inscribed with arcane formulae.
16
in fuzzy grey cloth woven from the voluminous beard of an arch-mage.
17
with strips of purplish bamboo, inked with prayers to a tutelary deity.
18
with fused crab shells with patterns suggestive of the arcana of the oceanic abyss.
19
with the platinum skin of some half-divine lamb.
20
with blood-splattered sackcloth.
D20
This spellbook contains
1
spells of internal pyromancy - of the art of inflaming passion, sparking inspiration, and burning away the soul.
2
rituals which allow for the summoning and interrogation
of extraplanar entities which have knowledge of lost treasures and
hidden powers.
3
spells of flesh-forging, which allow the reshaping, alloying, and purification of living tissues.
4
spells to call up or cast out plagues and swarms of vermin.
5
spells which mimic the incredible feats of a legendary hero.
6
spells perfect for an aspiring dark lord - spells which
allow one to brew goblins in a cauldron, cow others with terror, raise
fortresses of black stone, and suchlike.
7
spells which induce the growth of fractals, and behaviour mimicking fractals.
8
spells which draw out the latent powers of the mind - telepathy, telekinesis, astral projection, and suchlike.
9
numismatic spells, which imbue things which are not
coins with the attributes both physical and abstract of coins -
fungibility, flippability, etc.
10
spells of reversed golem-making, for taking the life
out of flesh to turn it into inert clay, and then applying that raw life
to varied ends.
11
spells to trap things within folded paper, animate
origami, instantly pulp wood into paper, and other such things of a
papery theme.
12
subtle & long-term spells affecting urban
environments - spells which preserve some buildings or lead others to
ruin, spells which attract or repel target demographics to or from
areas, a meta-spell that allows others to benefit from using a city as a
ritual diagram, and so on.
13
spells to conduct bees & their feeding habits, with
fantastical effects on their honey & hives - though it can also be
immediately useful, such as by making them feed on the blood of your
enemies or on acid.
14
spells which blur boundaries, such as those between
nightmares and the waking world, or between shadows and the bodies that
cast them.
15
spells that let you half-ass creating magic items by
tricking the universe - such as turning a stick you just found into a
wand with a fraction of the time and materials you'd normally need, but
with few charges & an increasing risk with use that the universe
will notice your trick and inflict backlash.
16
spells fit for a chef - spells to slice things to
pieces, to bring the heat of the oven, to preserve with cold, and so on -
all able to be put to lethal effect.
17
spells of blood magic - spells to injure someone's
relatives by injuring them, to control what one's blood has soaked into,
to make oneself more vivacious by bathing in others' blood, and so on
and suchlike.
18
spells to manipulate time - to stop its flow, to hold things in stasis, to accelerate it, even to reverse it.
19
spells dealing with wounds - able to transfer wounds
from one body to another on contact, to speak with wounds to learn about
the one who dealt them and the means they used to do so, to turn wounds
on oneself into fanged mouths, to birth beasts made of gore from
wounds, and so on and suchlike.
20
power word upon power word - a collection of utterances of terrible potency.
D20
This spellbook is protected
1
by its writer's ageless familiar, who takes the form of a fat calico cat that can hiss out curses.
2
by a complex mechanical lock.
3
by an enchanted lock which can only be opened with a
paired key which by most accounts is entombed alongside the spellbook's
authour.
4
by a hell-beast mystically bound to carry it from place to place until the end of time.
5
by trapped pages that entrance the unwary with maddening nonsense.
6
by the mutant descendants of the apprentices of the
wizard who wrote it, all members of a wealthy secret society who wear
heavy clothing to conceal their deviations from the uninitiated.
7
by a curse which prohibits readers from speaking of or replicating its contents, on pain of a lot of pain.
8
by a warrior oathbound to defend it beyond death.
9
in a vault surrounded by a complex full of deadly contrivances.
10
by a vengeful wraith imprisoned within the spellbook,
the vestige of someone slain and bound by its authour, released when it
is opened.
11
in the forbidden library of the temple of an order of warrior-monks who have deemed it anathema.
12
by its location in a cave at the peak of a monster-haunted mountain.
13
by its riddlesome encryption.
14
by the ghost of its authour's dog, able to possess whole packs of canines at once to maul whoever tries to take the spellbook.
15
by its current bearer, a wizard of some power and renown.
16
by obscurity - it is stuff into a hollow between the
walls of an old house, known only to the spiders and the rats, who hate
the thing and want it gone.
17
under lock and key and constant watch in the office of a witch-hunter who burned its previous bearer at the stake.
18
by the statue holding it, which will come to murderous animation when the spellbook is taken from it.
19
by a trap set to go off when the spellbook's weight is lifted off the pedestal it rests on.
20
by being written in an ancient, mostly-forgotten language.
D20
This spellbook is written
1
in a grandiose, prolix, self-aggrandizing manner.
2
briskly and brusquely, requiring one to read between the lines to really grasp it.
3
in a friendly, condescending tone, and is peppered with personal anecdotes.
4
with many ranting tangents on unrelated subjects.
5
circularly and self-referentially, the end being needed
to understand the beginning, the middle of a section being needed to
decode its adjoining parts, and so on and so forth.
6
in a paranoiac tone that switches freely between first-, second-, and third-person perspective.
7
haphazardly, with an abundance of over-crossed lines and marginalia.
8
in the form of an overly-expository novel.
9
using the politics of its time as a series of metaphors for magical procedures.
10
in the form of a sprawling cosmic mythos.
11
in colourful, extended allegory.
12
with clear excitement in the parts the authour was
interested in, and with near-suicidal proceduralism in the parts they
weren't.
13
in a tone of erotic temptation.
14
in a morbid and morose mood, with a grossly pessimistic slant.
15
beginning with simple syllogisms and escalating into mind-bending conclusions.
16
in an obscure dialect, with frequent & impenetrable allusions.
17
in alternating religious admonishment and heretical glee.
18
apparently by several different authours with clashing attitudes and styles.
19
sharply, comedically, in critique of its contemporary magical traditions.
20
in an exhaustively-detailed, mind-numbingly dull manner.
D20
Besides spells, this spellbook also contains
1
a collection of recipes for an especially-acquired taste.
2
a memoir of the authour's time as an apprentice.
3
seasonal poetry.
4
fanciful accounts of distant lands and other realms.
5
a frame narrative written from the perspective of
wizards in some future period discovering the spellbook and praising its
authour's genius.
6
some really bad puns.
7
the outline for a malformed ethical philosophy.
8
complaints about the authour's wife.
9
wrong theories about natural phenomena.
10
enough text in certain other occult languages that it functions as a sort of Rosetta Stone for them.
11
schematics for various Rube Goldberg machine-esque labour-saving devices.
12
strong opinions on the diet one must have & the exercises one must do to live a healthy life.
13
an account of a failed attempt at lichdom.
14
meditations on power, its meaning & responsibilities.
a shipping vessel with a belly of modular compartments stuffed with rare elements and alloys.
2
a swift courier carrying information too dangerous to broadcast, on cubes of imperishable adamant.
3
a pilgrim-vessel bringing the faithful to a place of cosmic importance.
4
a once-unconquerable dreadnought outfitted with the cutting edge of its past time.
5
a terraforming vessel bubbled with microbiomes.
6
a pleasure craft which sequestered the ultra-rich in unimaginable splendour.
7
a scientific vessel measuring galactic anomalies.
8
a veteran warship bearing scars from many battles.
9
a nomadic habitat for lifelong spacers.
10
a prototype propelled by an experimental drive.
11
a cyclopean asteroid-miner, half-digested hillocks of ore still borne in its gut.
12
a cryopod carrier with a hold full of frozen colonists.
13
an explorer charting unseen frontiers.
14
a historical artifact preserved for its legacy.
15
a key minister's extravagant personal transport.
16
a troop-carrier used for planetary invasions, loaded up with drop-pods.
17
a medical vessel bringing miraculous treatments to colonies without the infrastructure for them.
18
a cycler making regular transport-rounds within one system.
19
a tug for stellar megastructures.
20
once the flagship of a now-thoroughly-discredited ideology.
D20
This derelict spaceship might be found
1
by its distress beacon’s message, garbled to an inhuman pitch.
2
by overhearing rumours in a scavengers’ den.
3
on a swiftly decaying orbit around a stormy gas giant.
4
by investigating mission logs that ended abruptly.
5
in a prodigious leak of government cover-ups.
6
in a neglected corner of space where there shouldn’t have been any traffic.
7
halfway embedded in an icy comet that should have mutually vapourized it on impact.
8
parked on the severed, skeletal arm of a spaceport.
9
based on hints in an old shipman's song.
10
by its minute occlusion of a solar system's star.
11
stuck in a Lagrange point among other interplanetary detritus.
12
by buying a drink for its deranged last survivor.
13
by the bizarre digital censor-shadow it casts on star-maps.
14
by following notes on a discarded cocktail napkin in a station's recycler-pile.
15
with a preserved, genetically-programmed blood sample drawn from a navigator-caste who was onboard it.
16
landed on a volatile-rich moonlet.
17
by stumbling into the warp-sinkhole it left behind.
18
based on the testimony of the last band of survivors to escape it.
19
based on the guilty confession of someone responsible for its disappearance.
20
by folllowing coordinates that insert themselves like a memetic virus into innocuous statements and computer code.
D20
A deadly threat present on this derelict spaceship is
1
its onboard artificial intelligence, glitched to violent paranoia with sporadic control over the ship’s systems.
2
the xenospore-infested corpses of its original crew, driven by coopted intellect to spread and fester.
3
a mercenary kill-team dispatched to cover up an oligarch’s scandal the ship is implicated in.
4
an opportunistic predator native to the void between worlds, extracting minerals and organics.
5
magnetic mines placed by a paranoid crewmember.
6
a killer robotic skeleton able to steal and wear other's flesh as a half-living disguise.
7
a deranged cannibal who's survived eating the rest of its crew.
8
a swarm of technorganic nanomachines fusing flesh and machinery like a hell-cancer across it.
9
the semi-incorporeal, ultra-terrestrial entity summoned by a cult which hid among its passengers.
10
the experimental automated spacesuits it was outfit with - now wandering husks rattling with the bones of their once-occupants.
11
an extraterrestrial knight who practices a bizarre
(from a human perspective at least) form of chivalry, using the ship as a
trial-ground.
12
a poltergeist which haunts it - the maddened gestalt of
its crews' minds torn from their flesh by some obscure electro-magnetic
phenomenon.
13
its surgery-bot, whose programming was damaged by radiation, making it obsessed with turning living creatures into art.
14
a tribe of degenerate mutant clones, meant to be emergency back-ups for dead crewmembers - gone horribly wrong.
15
a self-mummified psychic who survived the ship's
general failure via mentally-imposed torpor, seeking to lure people in
and break their will so they can take a new, healthy body.
16
that the genetically-modified plants used as a
supplementary food/oxygen source aboard it networked & gained
sentience as well as a hatred for animal life.
17
the alien from Alien, but like a bit different - maybe
it's got tentacles instead of claws and the stabby-tail, and lays eggs
in your brain that make you hallucinate, for example.
18
a great amoebic slime, hiding in the ducts and the
interstitial spaces aboard the ship - an ambush predator waiting for the
right moment to emerge and absorb.
19
a hungry gang of rival salvagers.
20
a cabal of vacuum-adapted post-humans who view the presence of their less-evolved kin as an insult.
D20
What makes this derelict spaceship difficult to navigate
1
its own brittle, decayed structure, which any solid shock risks breaking.
2
is its malfunctioning artificial gravity generator, which changes its direction unpredictably.
3
are the bulkheads separating and sealing off its
various sections, which can only be safely opened with keycards
scattered about.
4
is its fuel leaking into various sections, creating pockets of poisonous & explosive gas.
5
is that its automatic locks between pressurized and
depressurized sections aren't working properly, meaning opening the
wrong door could get you sucked out into space.
6
is its warped hyper-geometry, tesselated out by a flaw in its drive.
7
are the pools of acid which dripped out of its batteries.
8
is its unintuitive layout.
9
is that its spectrum-opaque chassis makes it impossible to scan from the outside.
10
is the disruptive radiation emanating from its reactor.
11
is the web of silk-steel alloy disaster-webbing unleashed across the ship to hold together fractured sections.
12
is that attempting to connect to its internal mapping will glitch out your system and feed you nonsense.
13
is that some immense force has bent it out of shape.
14
is that all the signs are in some language there's no publicly-available translation for.
15
is that its lighting is glitched-out, and blindingly-strobbing.
16
is that its wiring has become fucked-up, and parts that shouldn't be electrified have become electrified.
17
is the plasmatic fog which has gathered in its passages, restricting line of sight.
18
is its misleading signage, likely mistranslated.
19
are the big holes punctured through it by meteorites.
20
are the tangles of dangling wires, tubing, and flex-ducts lining its hallways.
D20
Besides the usuals, salvaging this derelict spaceship
1
will get you a lot of money, like, a lot a lot of money.
2
will earn you a hell of a lot of rep with scavengers, which you can use to make them back off claims or work with you.
3
will get you an experimental weapon which can wreck just about anything without exotic defenses.
4
will get you blueprints which can be used to greatly upgrade your own ship.
5
will grant you an intact module which you can transplant whole onto your own ship.
6
will bring you to the attention of a corrupt space-sheriff looking to shake you down.
7
will net you a contract from a corporation impressed by
your results, who want you to retrieve the important parts of one of
their own lost vessels.
8
gains you some exotic materials that would be worth some serious favours to the right buyer.
9
will get you an anomalous power-core that keeps working regardless of interference or resource draw.
10
will get you the experience you need to become an expert in dismantling spaceships with minimal risk to yourself.
11
will get you some primo blackmail material on some powerful corporation, government, or NGO.
12
can get you a handy, tanky, crab-shaped cargo-loader robot.
13
can get you a lot of goodwill and favours from the friends and family of those lost on it.
14
will get you a signal-spoof which allows you to disguise your own spaceship as the wreck to remote detection methods.
15
gets you an alien artifact that does weird shit.
16
can net you a canister of bio-nanites that can heal
just about any wound and replace limbs and organs by flowing into and
merging with your flesh.
17
provides clues that make up a sort of map to an even bigger, juicier haul.
18
can get you some cool and expensive cybernetic implants.
19
can get you a smuggled crate of good-ass space drugs.
20
will get a self-righteous squad of space-police on your ass.
those who drink from it to receive prophetic visions of heavens and hells.
2
water within it to be transmuted into (1d6): 1, wine;
2, nitroglycerin; 3, colourless, odourless poison; 4, soma; 5, acid; 6,
holy water.
3
fluids within it to be purified of all contaminants.
4
fluids within it to drain into a huge extradimensional reservoir, which can be spilled out of the grail after.
5
those who share a drink from it to become unable to directly harm each other.
6
those who drink from it to gain preternatural talent at
(1d6): 1, poetry; 2: brewing; 3, fishing; 4, smithing; 5, lying; 6,
commanding troops.
7
those to drink from it to gain the ability to swallow swords and then spit them out again with impaling force.
8
dead warriors who sip from it to return to a fighting half-life, remaining animate so long as they remain on campaign.
9
those who drink from it to gain eternal youth.
10
those who drink from it to immediately ascend to a pure land or pleasure-realm.
11
those who drink from it to immediately achieve the physical prime of their species.
12
a cloud to form above the one who drinks from it, which perpetually rains droplets of milk and honey.
13
those who drink from it to be transmuted into (1d4): 1, gold; 2, adamantine; 3, a great big tree; 4, a living statue.
14
one who drinks from it to be healed from any wound, but only once.
15
the shape of the one who drank it to become fluid, allowing them to assume the shape of any animal they've seen before.
16
those who drink it to gain great wisdom, and be dispelled of any illusions, charms, or other impositions upon their mind.
17
the one who drinks it to receive a mark of divine
protection on their brow - thereafter, should they die by violence or
treachery, the one(s) responsible for their death will be struck with a
plague of (1d4): 1, ravenous insects; 2, boiling boils; 3, lightning; 4,
baleful winds.
18
the one who drank from it to be totally nourished, refreshed, and satisfied, as if they'd drank the nectar of the very gods.
19
the full knowledge of a future technology to sprout in the mind of its drinker.
20
those who drink from it to become immune to drowning, strong water currents, and getting the chills from rain.
D20
This grail is held
1
in the grip of a skeleton in the oubliette of a mossy and forgotten donjon.
2
in an overlooked corner of a merchant's warehouse.
3
in the mead-hall of an ancient chieftain cursed to relive the same violent night again and again with his retinue.
4
by a were-dragon princess self-imprisoned at top of a vitrified stone tower.
5
in the fortress-monastery of a militant order, who guard it as a relic of their founder.
6
as a conversation piece by the guildmaster of a guild
of criminal stonemasons, who intimidate competitors into giving them
free masonry.
7
in an ark borne at the head of a warlord's host - they consider it the source of their victories.
8
by a filthy though egalitarian under-republic of
beggars, pickpockets, and pariahs who live in the sewers - whoever is
speaking during an assembly puts their hand on it.
9
embedded in a sore on the forehead of the king of the giants.
10
as the heart of the tea-cup golem, enforcer of the Wizard of the Wizened Woods.
11
in the petrified arms of the most handsome man in the world, in the lair of the medusa who loves him still.
12
by the rattling husks of a legion of undead ant-people, cursed never to rest until they find its worthy bearer.
13
by a bitter old elf who lives in a bitter old tree, and who stole it long ago to deny it to humanity.
14
in a crumbling shrine in the wilderness where an
immortal and addled knight dwells, unsure now of the test he must pose
to those who seek the grail.
15
by the devil Mesostopheles, who is sure that someone will want to trade their soul for it eventually.
16
by a hydromancer who uses it for her divinations, and thereby has gotten very rich off gambling.
17
in the treasury of the pearlescent palace of the prince of oysters.
18
as the top prize for a tournament of martial artists coming in from all over the world for it.
19
in the hoard of the Pewter Dragon, who collects all
manner of drinking vessels, and whose breath turns the air to stampeding
horses.
20
by a hermit in their mountain-top retreat.
D20
This grail can only be taken up by
1
the truly virtuous.
2
the truly vicious.
3
the one who slays its guardian.
4
a total pacifist.
5
one who has never fled from battle.
6
a couple in true love.
7
someone who has royal blood or title.
8
someone who fights a duel to the death over it.
9
the weakest among any group that have come for it.
10
someone who doesn't actually want it.
11
a drunken sailor.
12
an oathbreaker.
13
the skyclad.
14
someone suffering from an incurable disease.
15
a wizard who's burned their books.
16
someone who's blind, dead, and/or mute.
17
the one who makes a proper toast to it, with the right vintage & the right ancient language.
18
someone who leaves something of equal value in its place.
19
one who has the blessing of the ghost of the craftsman who made it.
Bogeymen are underused in fantasy bestiaries. We’ve got a hundred
sorts of undead, elemental, golem, elf, etc., so why not more
representation for the monsters under the bed.
D20
This Bogeyman Looks Like...
1
Yourself reflected in a warped and shattered mirror.
2
A cat with human fingers and joints that bend in all the wrong directions and none of the right ones.
3
A person with nothing covering their bones but tightly stretched skin.
4
Something indistinct beneath a patchy quilt of fur and raw skins.
5
A leprous crone with too many teeth.
6
A man made of needles.
7
A hypertrophied parody of a bodybuilder with thrombotic arteries coiled like pythons around their body.
8
A big, fuzzy, and round baboon with a little face.
9
A dripping eyeball with a body made from twisted nerves and veins.
10
A hairless bear whose flesh could be mistaken for a carpet of wriggling maggots.
11
Some kind of animal, or maybe a person, so scarred and bent you can’t tell which.
12
A spongy mass of fungal growths lumped into a humanoid shape.
13
A cracked, man-sized doll in a tattered dress.
14
Living roadkill.
15
A chitinous man wearing a sackcloth bag over its head.
16
A goblin with a carved pumpkin for a head.
17
A humanoid crocodile.
18
A person in heavy, form-concealing black clothing and nothing like a person beneath it all.
19
A scarecrow sewn from guts and tummies.
20
A phallico-yonic Freudian nightmare.
D20
A Distinctive Feature Of This Bogeyman Is...
1
A mouth full of dangling spaghetti-tendrils.
2
A splattering of bulging eyes across its head that can all turn in different directions.
3
A sharp-tipped tongue that can touch the tip of its toes.
4
The suckers along the insides of its arms and legs. Once it grabs you it won’t let go.
5
One of its hands is a big crab claw.
6
Its gaping flared nostrils that can track scents better than a bloodhound and spray webs of sticky snot.
7
Skin covered in pregnant pustules that release swarms of biting bugs when burst.
8
Spindly limbs like a daddy long-legs’ that can catch up no matter how fast you run.
9
Its crust of filth that covers it like armour.
10
The malformed symbiotic twin growing out of its back who treats it like a rider does their mount.
11
Its colourful stripes and slimy skin. Do not touch, highly toxic.
12
Its glowing eyes that can paralyze those who meet its gaze.
13
Its hook-clawed wings that can disembowel with a strike or carry it aloft.
14
Its prolapsable, prehensile, acid-dripping innards.
15
The knobbly horns atop its head and shoulders which it adorns with grisly decorations, such as impaled birds.
16
Its scraggly fly-like setae that can detect the slightest movement of the air.
17
The rubbery, elastic composition of its body.
18
The delicious, candy-like nodules extruded from its body.
19
Its ability to seem perfectly normal thing to the people it isn’t hunting.
20
That it breaks like a Matryoshka doll each time it’s damaged, revealing a smaller, weirder form beneath its current surface.
D20
This Bogeyman Is Known To...
1
Eat the nails off sleeping peoples’ fingers and toes.
2
Kidnap children to raise as its own.
3
Choose one person as prey then stalk them to the ends of the earth.
4
Fixate on a lonely person and address their imagined needs in a distasteful fashion.
5
Beat victims to the brink of death then leave out for the elements to finish off.
6
Spread false rumours of its own powers and vulnerabilities.
7
Be a violent alcoholic.
8
Take great joy in driving people to terror-maddened rampages.
9
Be unable to notice someone who’s hiding under a blanket that was knit with love.
10
Cut the tendons out of cowards so they can’t run away.
11
Spoil milk, turn wine to vinegar, and generally ruin all of life’s little joys.
12
Abhor cuteness.
13
Collect shameful secrets and sell them in esoteric trades.
14
Build shrines to unknown entities with blood as mortar and bones as bricks.
15
Trick the lusty into laying with it and then loose their hybrid children to plague the world.
16
Hunt anyone who’s come into contact with a particular treasure.
17
Kill the faithful and despoil temples.
18
Drive artists to create inspired and macabre works.
19
Switch targets if its current one makes a joke at another’s expense. The bogeyman will then go after the person who was mocked.
20
Serve cruel summoners as a hench-thing.
D20
This Bogeyman Is Believed To Lurk...
1
Just beneath the surface of scummy waters.
2
Atop the shelves of musty libraries.
3
Inside the walls of homes that have seen more tears than laughter.
4
On misty moors.
5
In a place parallel to reality, only coming into existence when called.
6
In empty graves.
7
Among the gnarled roots of rotten trees.
8
Near grates and drains and ditches.
9
In the deepest, darkest part of every basement.
10
In the shadows cast by wizards’ towers and witches’ huts.
11
On fresh battlefields and in the nightmares of their survivors.
12
Within a mine that killed many in a collapse.
13
In sewers and stink-heaps, ruling a court of clever rats.
14
And wallow in the gore of abattoirs.
15
In cupboards stocked with moldy bread.
16
In a manor on the bed of a dark and treacherous river.
17
Disguised among us in a human skin-suit.
18
In a grimy cauldron that flies across the night sky.
19
In farmers’ fields at noonday and midnight.
20
Atop a craggy hill where moonlight shines in strange shades.
D20
This Bogeyman Is Said To Be Especially Dangerous Because...
1
It can compress its body to squeeze through any crack and hide in any hole.
2
It can teleport between patches of darkness.
3
It can brew poisons and potions from its own secretions and parts from unclean beasts.
4
It can find out all your fears with a glance.
5
When it’s near the only noise you can make is screams.
6
It can make you regress in age, down to an infant then further still.
7
It can change shape to resemble an ordinary household object.
8
It can swallow something as much as twice its size whole.
9
It can inflict lingering delusions and phobias.
10
If you think of it it’ll know where you are.
11
It can feed off fear to become more powerful.
12
It can make sleeping people sleepwalk into its traps.
13
It can befriend even the mindless undead and convince them to do its bidding.
14
It can phase through inorganic matter.
15
It was once a human serial killer, and understands psychology and society better than others of its kind.
16
There’s only one way to kill it for good, and nobody alive knows what that is.
17
It can pop in and out of a pocket dimension like a trapdoor spider and its den.
18
Magic and machines work unreliably in its presence.
19
It’s part of a whole family of bogeymen who will avenge its harms.
20
Fighting it makes you lose track of time and space.
Raising snakes for their hides and venom. The slithering things are more common than squirrels here.
4
Selling rough textiles woven from the hair of hardy goats.
5
By waging annual war with the bears over incoming anadromous fish.
6
Picking through an old, forgotten, enormous scrap dump.
7
Cooking up and trading inferior drugs in bulk.
8
Farming a sort of huge, carnivorous tuber that surfaces
in the autumn and must be speared to death. It’s about the only crop
that’ll grow in this town’s shitty dirt.
9
Acting as a vacation spot for the wealthy, where they may indulge in their worst impulses consequence-free.
10
Living in sod-heap bunkers, farming earthen grubs and fungal crops deep below the surface.
11
By cultivating a reputation for grotesque xenophobic violence.
12
By pathetically toadying to the bandits that lurk nearby.
13
Scraping out the last dregs of a mine.
14
Hunting and trapping scrawny animals, selling the hides to passing traders.
15
Skimming the surfaces of grotty ponds for mosquitoes and algae.
16
Working in a manufactory under slave-like conditions.
17
On remittances sent back by townsfolk working as mercenaries far afield.
18
On the alms handed out by a nearby monastery.
19
Only as a ghost town, with a few inhabitants too stubborn or old to go elsewhere.
20
On the dwindling fortune of its founder.
D20
This Town’s Population...
1
All share the same family name.
2
Have about a dozen teeth between them all.
3
Speak a unique and nigh-incomprehensible dialect.
4
Would take about any job if it meant they could leave.
5
Overcharge for even the barest hospitality.
6
Know the area around their town downright instinctually.
7
Have more fleas than their dogs do.
8
Take great pride in the swill they distil.
9
Claim descent from an unlikely variety of folkloric heroes.
10
Maintain a complex network of petty feuds, conducted through pranks and thefts more often than violence.
11
Practice a borderline heretical version of the region’s dominant religion.
12
Have a bloody rivalry with the next town over.
13
Gamble on damn near everything.
14
Will always support one of their own against an outsider.
15
Celebrate pain tolerance and ritual scarification.
16
Share the same dream when they sleep.
17
Is nocturnal, for some reason.
18
Own all the town’s property in common.
19
Train rigourously as a militia.
20
Are fond of trapping their homes to deter intruders.
D20
This Town’s History...
1
Is that it was once bigger and more prosperous, but has shrivelled over time.
2
Is known by heart by every inhabitant. Newcomers will
find themselves suddenly remembering bits of this history the longer
they stay.
3
Is recorded in paintings on the side of a ruined barn.
4
Is told differently by each family in it.
5
Stretches way back.
6
Was deliberately and thoroughly censored by the town’s elders.
7
Attributes the town’s founding to an outrageous farce.
8
Claims that it was the origin of a popular sport.
9
Places it as the birthplace of a surprising number of important cultural figures.
10
Holds that it was once the location of a ferocious
battle. Selling fake trinkets allegedly from this battle is a side
business for the town.
11
States that a plague nearly wiped out the town a while back. The key to its continued existence is closely guarded.
12
Has been rewritten to portray the town in a hyperbolically better light.
13
Doesn’t go back that far.
14
Has some significant holes, as do the memories of the townsfolk who lived in those forgotten times.
15
Says its founding was divinely inspired.
16
Makes it prejudiced against city folk.
17
Contains a rich culinary tradition.
18
Is weirdly similar to a well-known mythic cycle, only much more low-key and grimy.
19
Records it as being ethnically unique in the region.
20
Seems to repeat itself in broad strokes every few generations.
D20
This Town’s Layout...
1
Is like a wheel centred around a massive barbecue pit.
2
Is scattered, with weedy fields and dirt paths between homesteads.
3
Trails along a main road.
4
Is grid-like.
5
Places it mostly within the walls of an old hill fort.
6
Winds around cyclopean menhirs and dolmens.
7
Puts it nestled at the base of a cliff that it’s halfway built into.
8
Fords a river like a big shoddy bridge.
9
Indicates it was built atop the foundations of long-razed structures.
10
Is half-sunken yet still inhabited, built on too-soft ground but used up too many resources to abandon.
11
Expresses stark yet infinitesimal class divides.
12
Outlines an occult symbol.
13
Segregates men and women, as well as children and adults.
14
Was copied from a nearby city in miniature.
15
Was built up chaotically. Nothing about it makes sense.
16
Follows a spiral.
17
Funnels passing travellers into a chokepoint.
18
Mimics a cluster of constellations in the sky above it.
19
Is concentrated in a few ramshackle towers and the pathways between them, built up rather than out over time for some reason.
20
Is split down the middle based on a forgotten cultural division.
D20
This Town’s Dark Secret Is That...
1
It was founded by a vampire and its blood-cult. By some
forgotten sequence of events the vampire was staked and laid to rest in
the walls of the town’s brewery, but its citizens still know and adore
the powers of blood.
2
All its people are something else, just playing at being human.
3
They’re sworn to serve the grim wizard whose tower is
hidden just out of town. If they don’t heed the wizard’s commands, a
heavy curse will fall on all their heads.
4
They bribe the things in a nearby cave to leave the village alone with plump babies.
5
Their headsman hasn’t changed since the village’s founding. If anybody knows why, they’re not saying.
6
It shelters a band of failed revolutionaries, still burning with the desire to see the current government overthrown.
7
Is that it serves as the source of recruits for a secretive organization of fanatical assassins.
8
It was used as the testing ground for esoteric weapons. The town’s population still suffer the marks left by them.
9
Everyone who lives there is eventually struck by
infertility. The town only maintains its population by kidnaping and
indoctrinating travellers.
10
They engage in trade and relations with inhuman creatures.
11
Something deep beneath it called to its founders, and
they’ve been digging down ever since. They’re so very close to
unearthing it now.
12
Something’s gotten into their heads. A memetic
parasite. It’s making them build a dungeon which will serve as a psychic
broadcast array when completed.
13
Someone in the village is transforming into something dangerous. They’d rather find a cure than kill the person outright.
14
They lynched a prophet after mistakenly believing the
prophet’s predictions to be false. Now they see every odd occurrence as
an omen, and seek to avert it through sacrifice.
15
They conspire to avoid paying taxes.
16
The trees in their graveyard grow with the faces of the dead. At night these faces moan their regrets.
17
They’ve fallen under the spell of a snake-oil salesman who stumbled upon the recipe for a subtly flawed love potion.
18
They abused a wandering priest, who called on their god to curse the town.
19
They waylaid a noble passing through the town and
covered it up as a monster attack. Investigators and hunters have been
snooping around.
20
It’s caught in a time loop, replaying the same traumatic event time and again.
