Language Slots as Flexible Spells; Or: A Different Sort of Wizard

Dredged from the draft pile (176 strong at the time of writing this):

Ok so it's a bit of this: http://middenmurk.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-affairs-of-wizards.html

& a bit of this: http://monstermanualsewnfrompants.blogspot.com/2018/11/bad-ideas-with-legs.html

& a bit of this: http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2018/02/when-all-you-have-is-hammer-item-based.html

THERE is a sort of wizard, maybe they're just one sort among many, or maybe they're the only sort in the world. These wizards see beyond the dross of matter and energy, essence and substance. Rather, it should be said, can you see this matter? Taste this substance? No, of course not - not directly - there is the raw experience: colour, texture, flavour, etc., and then the language that mediates that experience into something we can comprehend, contextualize: red, rough, spicy. It's a three-step process: the inconceivable reality => the perceived qualia => the world, our world, built within and between ourselves with language.

These wizards concern themselves with that third step - the easiest to change. Not easy by any means, but changing a language might always be easier than seeing a new colour.

These wizards can change it because the what they can speak aren't technically languages - not in the everyday usage. They aren't used to communicate person-to-person. They can speak directly to the universe, like a salmon swimming up a waterfall, reversing the natural course to alter inconceivable reality through their words.

A whole lot of fluff to say: every spell these wizards know takes up a language slot, and they cast them by speaking.

"Dude, whoa?!!" you might be saying to yourself, aloud, as you're reading this, "Wouldn't that be overpowered if you could cast Fire Ball the 3rd level spell from Basic Dungeons & Dragons™ just by speaking??!". No. Well, maybe it will be overpowered, but you wouldn't be casting any fired balls. Instead each slot would be what I am calling a "flexible spell".

So: Scrap Princess's post linked above has the idea of new classes made from one class's mechanics and another's aesthetics. This post is essentially about a hypothetical class with the aesthetic of wizards and the mechanics of a class that doesn't actually exist: the item-haver.

Roll on a table of items. Maybe the udan-adan one linked above, maybe a one of your choice. That's your spell. Give it a fancy name or something, but really that's it. Your spell can do anything that item could do, in the amount of time spent to cast it. If you're attacked or otherwise critically distracted trying to cast it, test concentration or it fizzles out. When you stop casting the spell any ongoing effects stop.

Do you have a rope spell ("Binding of the Immaculate Serpent")? Would it take you two rounds to cross the room, tie a noose around a goblin's neck, and lift them up to the rafters? There's the time for your casting, and then after that you'd have to keep casting to choke them.

Simple. Easy. Elegant.

Beyond the Bizarre Armoire Session 8: Of All The Stars The Sun Shines Brightest, And Shines Alone

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

Session 5

Session 6

Session 7

Joining for this session were:
-Renefor (https://falseidolstla.blogspot.com/) as Velasco the Heterodox Monk

Due to the chaos and contingencies of life our party was reduced from our usual proud legion to just one for this session. There were far fewer debates and violations of the Geneva Conventions, though this may just be correlative.

The party pulls their boat and raft onto this beach of ash and sawdust, coming under the shadow of the great cliff. Ibrahim's hideous, now partially-frag frog-skinned dog yaps towards the Southwest, tantalizing close to the Countess's scent. Velasco unleashes the dog and follows closely after, ending up at a pile stacked as high as a hill, with humanoid figures crawling over it, indistinguishable in the gloom. Cautiously approaching, quieting the dog, Velasco spies that the pile is made of faces somehow carved clean off their heads, and the figures had no faces of their own.

With a sinking feeling Velasco and the dog grope through the pile, giving a wide berth to the faceless people. After some time they find the face of the Countess: beautiful (as much as someone could be before the invention of dental hygiene), and much younger than the Count. Velasco is able to wrest the face from the dog before it could be chewed on. They return to base camp.

With the others presumably too drunk on the remaining turnip-wine to productively contribute, Velasco continues on up the beach, looking for a spot where the cliff dipped down enough to climb. He comes across a section where aquatic Severglaives fauna had beached themselves and rotted, being picked over by a small group of rust-men.

The rust-men come off friendly enough, and after striking up a conversation thank Velasco for rescuing their comrades from the pinecone knights' punishment (those comrades being the ones rescued from a slow drowning execution back in Session 5). They warn Velasco that a settlement of "loyalist" rust-men who still obeyed the King and his servants lay ahead. Velasco in turn preaches of the archons and their love, which provides the first hope and beauty to the lives of these people who'd known nothing but violence and the terror of being chased since their birth into the world. They gift some of the fresher meat they'd harvested to Velasco, then both continue on their way.

After some more travelling Velasco notices some smoke over the horizon, and the cliffside beginning to tilt down to earth. He also comes across a strange figure (though in this land perhaps it's the normal that would be stranger): a porcelain mask and ornate red & purple damask robe, floating in the air as though there were someone beneath wearing them, but past the eye-holes there was only emptiness. The figure introduced himself bombastically as Mazlo of the Deepest Pockets, extradimensionalist extraordinaire. Velasco learns that the man is a mage, and a specialist in places that lay in the uncommon folds of the fabric of space - an art as forbidden to polite society as necromancy.

Using a magic glove Mazlo confirms that Velasco is not of the armoire's world, and presses for information. The mage is seeking the "seed" around which the world had formed. In exchange for the magic glove - reasoned to be the key to finding the Countess now that she'd lost or traded her face -  Velasco reveals the location of the armoire itself in both worlds (apparently Mazlo had arrived through some sort of astral projection).

The monk keeps walking, and comes across the loyalist settlement, fortified from cliff to water's edge by a wall of slates hewn from the cliff's dark stone.

As it was getting late, Velasco decides to return to their boats rather than deal with whatever fresh bullshit waited beyond the settlement's gate that evening, and has the boats propped up flipped-over to nestle under as shelters. The monk whips up a delicious meal with the supplies they'd received from the pinecone knight garrison and the rust-men, and Brindle snuggles up (entirely Platonically) when they set up for sleep, if only to be away from Sieur "Cleave a pinecone to the bone" Alistair and Ibrahim "I see a boar I blast it into gore" the Adept.

In the morning Velasco returns to the settlement, and is confronted by the guard manning the wall. With some quick talking, name-dropping Captain Skybrush, and a bribe of some campfire-cooked food, the hedgehog wins his way in. He makes his way through the place, somewhat ramshackle but the closest to a full and unrazed village the party had been to thus far. The homes were made of the same stacked slates as the wall, and there were some apparently-feral rust-men locked up in cages at times comforted or tormented by the others throughout. At the other end was a massive wall of lumber-reinforced earthworks, and an elevator raising rust-men both caged and not over the top.

At the top of the wall was perched a woman with a bird's wings and lower body, and feathery black-and-white hair, inspecting the rust-men that made their way up on the elevator. Velasco shouts to the woman to get her attention, and she flutters down. The monk surreptitiously scans her with the glove he'd received from Mazlo, but gets no glow off it. The two talk about the Countess, the wedding, and what the bird-woman was doing. She explains that she is a chickadee-valkyrie (chickyrie?), tasked with inspecting and testing fighters to see if they were worthy of the King's service. Velasco brags of the party's victories, and thus impressing the valkyrie is allowed onto the elevator.

-I tried to do the valkyrie's dialogue like a chickadee's call, words or syllables repeating at the end of sentences, not sure how well that came across. Even if it's annoying it's probably easier to remember the character though right?-

On the other side of the wall was verdant land, fields of green and trampled dirt. Something like a war camp stretched out before Velasco, an army of warriors going about their day-to-day business and practicing their skills. He passed north through the camp, trying not to attract any hostile attention.

The monk arrived at the edge of a wide and swift-moving river. A single bridge of broad white stone straddled it. Standing resolute in the center of the bridge was a pinecone wearing the unmistakable spikey armour of the legendary Blackbriar Knight. Here the session ended.

Will the Blackbriar Knight prove the superior warrior to Sieur Alistair? What face does the Countess now wear? Is the game doomed to hemorrhage every player that joins? Find out next time, on Beyond the Bizarre Armoire!

-Following the session Renefor & I were joined by friends of the blog TheisticGilthoniel and Phlox for a long discussion on theology, art, and the best flavour of chips (for me nothing can beat the simple refinement of "regular" - sometimes called "original"). These sorts of discussions often happen after a session, but I've only seen fit to mention them here. Besides playing the games themselves, being able to have these smart & interesting talks with smart & interesting people who I otherwise never would've encountered has been one of the few genuine pleasures the abominable quarantine has afforded me. If the world ever returns to a semblance of normalcy, I hope that's what remains.-

Beyond the Bizarre Armoire Session 7: It's Time to D-D-D-D-D-D-D-Duel

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

Session 5

Session 6

Joining for this session were:
-Surprise guest star Phlox (https://whosemeasure.blogspot.com/), as Mockstarch the Pinecone Knight (Fighter)
-Oblidisideryptch (https://oblidisideryptch.blogspot.com/), as Sieur Alastair the Knight
-Renefor (https://falseidolstla.blogspot.com/) as Velasco the Heterodox Monk

The party, accompanied by their new friends of the pinecone knight garrison, make their way back to the tower uneventfully. They're invited in for drinks (fetched by the abrasive squire Fiberbiscuit & Mockstarch) and a meal of stewed vegetables and greasy, tangy beast-meats.

As they break bread they inquire to Captain Skybrush about ways to meet the King in the Pines, claiming to be foreign diplomats come to pay their respects for his wedding. Skybrush explains that he'd only ever met the King twice in his entire life, once when he was knighted and the second time when he was recognized for his skill at arms in a tournament. Mockbrush notes this was the same tournament won by the near-mythical Blackbriar Knight. He also notes that such a tournament is planned at the King's wedding.

Their chat is interrupted by an ungodly chatter from the basement, which renders the knight's awkwardly silent as they ignore it and wait for it to pass. After it does, Velasco presses the Captain for an explanation, reasoning that he wouldn't want to stay in a place with some inexplicable monstrosity. Captain Skybrush relents, and exposits that there's a legend that their world was not the first to occupy this land, but rather subducted another world beneath it, and that certain key locations (such as this very tower) were constructed by the King to seal the denizens of that buried world out of the light. In fact, the previous Captain of the garrison lost his position due to mismanagement of the seal, which Mockstarch recognizes as the basis for the old pinecone song "The Captain's Disgrace".

Thoroughly spooked, the party agrees to leave what's sealed sealed, and I realize that by the end of this campaign I will have enough unused dungeon material to kludge together a megadungeon. A pinecone knight named Irongall vehemently agrees with this course of action.

At this point a heated debate breaks out over party leadership. It turns out that rather than being equals in brigandage, Alistair considered the rest of them subordinate to himself, and issues an open challenge to a duel to anyone who questioned that. Irongall states that he gladly accepts this servitude. The challenge gets the iconoclastic Velasco riled up, and despite the vast gulf in their combat experience he rises to it. The garrison pulls furniture aside to set up an arena, and pick their favourites to cheer for.

The two meet fist-to-paw. Despite Velasco's luck and fury (and some truly unfortunate rolls on Alistair's part) the hedgehog is simply no match for a trained knight (something of a duelling specialist in the GLOG). A cauldron full of stew is tipped over in their melee, to everyone's disappointment. Velasco knocks some respect into Alistair, but in the end takes the L.

Mockstarch too takes her try at Alistair's challenge, this time choosing to cross blades with the knight. The poor pinecone is far outmatched and cloven from groin to shoulder, all but spilling her resinous guts on the floorboards. Brindle, be-shirted mouse and love interest of Velasco, thinks Alistair's even more of a psycho after this. By the will of the archons Velasco's monkish training is enough to stabilize Mockstarch before she bleeds out. As recompense, Alistair offers the almost-halved pinecone succor wherever and whenever they meet again.

Mockstarch, colourized, courtesy of Phlox

Thoroughly sobered by this turn of events, the party and the garrison move the table and chairs back to their positions to finish their dinner. Impressed by the seemingly-meek hedgehog's martial fervour, and beginning to believe there might something to this "religion" stuff, Greyboll (one of the knights) asks Velasco to lead them all in a prayer.

It was a bit after that when the conversation shifted to the topic of pinecone biology & sociology, namely that no one, myself included, had much idea what was up with all that. I assumed pinecones were hermaphroditic, and that gender would be more of an affectation for them, but apparently the cones are male and the seeds are female? Something like that. Also some debate on whether they're made of wood or more general vegetable matter. This will be the topic of an Extra Materials post at some point, after extensive research.

After finishing up the party is lodged for the night, to rest and recuperate after the day's violence. In the morning they prepare to head out, gifted rations for the road, or river as the case may be. Alistair, not wanting his horse to become an alloygator's snack, leaves it with Captain Skybrush, who swears to take care of it as if it were his own noble mount. They wave their goodbyes and set out to follow the Countess's trail once again.

This trail leads them by a chainmail-clad python lounging in a tree, who they spot from far enough away to backtrack away from and circle around, though this costs them precious time. Eventually they arrive at an open lake, with a village of shoddy hovels on the far end, and a splinter of darkness blacker than night beyond it on the horizon. The party approaches its dock cautiously, and all but one of the strange fishermen on it retreat inland. The one who remains has no legs (or lower torso) to retreat with.

This fisherman greets them as "wholesomes", and introduces himself as a "lackie", one who's had a part of themself stolen by the Loggerhead. In further conversation the party learns that the Loggerhead does not only steal parts but trades them away as well, but what makes the monster choose one or the other is poorly understood. A famous example of the latter is apparently the Blackbriar Knight, who traded their mangled sword-arm for a strong and fresh one. The village is a place where lackies remain because they're too ashamed or damaged to go home, and it would be best for the party to go on their way.

They continue to the edge of the Severglaives, its rusty-red water appearing black in the shadow of the cliffs that now loomed before them. At their foot is a beach of ash and soaked sawdust. Sir Alistair surmises that the Countess must have sought out the Loggerhead's services, for whatever reason, and that following the trail into its desert might only lead them to their doom or dismemberment. The session ends here, with their next step uncertain.

What might the Countess have traded away, and what might she have gained in return? Will the seal in the tower hold forever? Could the next duel that Alistair fights be before the eyes of the King in the Pines? Find out next time, on Beyond the Bizarre Armoire!

The Thawing Kingdom: A Zine by Monsieur le Battlier; A Review By semiurge

I mentioned elsewhere recently that I'd like to see more bloggers go beyond their wheelhouse, write on themes, content, or whatever else they haven't before, or usually wouldn't. This is me putting my money where my mouth is and doing something I've never done on this blog before: writing a review.

The subject of this review is friend of the blog Monsieur le Battlier's zine The Thawing Kingdom, recently released on itch.io. 

The Overview

28 pages total, a few pages short of that for content what with the title page, back page, and so on. Public domain art, well-picked, moody. System-neutral.

The zine's based on a series of blogposts Monsieur did. I'm not gonna go back and cross-check what's in those vs. the zine, but you could probably get a lot of the juicy bits from those.

Intro's nice, dark fairy-tale that gets you in the right headspace, sets the stage for this fantastical place, its thematic dichotomies, the when/where/why/how of it being plopped in your world as the strange and unknown where none before have tread - classic adventure material. This is kept on going throughout, as the strength of the zine as a whole, in its wealth of imagination and in the tensions of its narrative heart chugging along beneath: heat & cold, love & hate, stasis & revolution. It strikes a sweet spot between vanilla fantasy and the gonzo hodge-podge.

Fun monsters, locations, ideas, and imagery abound.

The Nitty-Gritty

There's a significant gap between what I'd consider a great blogpost, and what I'd consider a great work that people are paying for. Again, I'm not accustomed to writing reviews, so I hope that the critiques of this zine I'll be laying out below are accurate and constructive.

The zine could've been improved primarily in three ways: more efficient use of its space, more attention to mechanics, and less ambivalence in its writing.

About 6 of the zine's 28 pages are dedicated to a fascinating place called Draailant, where humans overthrew their gods and created a coal-powered cult of progress. One of the last things mentioned in these pages is that people from Draailant can't really go to the Thawing Kingdom, and would be quickly eaten by Half-Thawed (an iconic sort of monster that poses interesting problems in play) if they did, and that the very air in Draailant is hostile to people from the Thawing Kingdom. To me this space would be better used for folks, inventions, etc., from Draailant which players would actually interact with, besides the delightfully Boschian little devils.

Tables that are like bits and pieces of an encounter table, or sub-tables of an encounter table, are present throughout the zines: travellers you might encounter, animals and monsters of the Thawing Kingdom, occupations of people in the Thawing Kingdom, etc. I think these would be more useful if unified into an encounter table instead of leaving it to me, or anyone else trying to run the setting, into one by our own effort.

Monsieur and I are alike in that we prefer the prose-y and imaginative to the mechanical and banal, however for a complete setting zine I think there needs to be more fleshed-out and harmonized on the latter end. For example, there's a neat mechanic for accumulating supernatural Cold from spells and suchlike, but the way to lose that Cold is basically handwaved. We're told that you must spend time by a fire in good company, but for an hour, a day? Either way it would greatly affect the mood of playing in the Thawing Kingdom. Similar situation for stats for monsters. I don't quite need them, but they'd be nice to have.

That stuff, to me, is a lesser issue than what was done with the locations. As mentioned previously I like what's listed for them, they'd make great entries for a hex- or pointcrawl, but in the zine they're only listed. Putting that list into a framework I could run right out of the box would go a long way to making me willing and able to use this zine for a campaign. Including a dungeon (or two, or three...) would also help in this regard.

The writing's good, except where important things are left out for ambivalence. There's a bit too much "possibly, perhaps, could have, could be, some say, who knows" for my liking. For example, one of the locations has a mad, murderous wizard. We're told: "Possibly there is a method to his madness, but what that may be is unknown...". Mystery should enter the game in play, between the DM and players, not between the writer and the DM. That's just putting more work on the DM's shoulders. This is present in the mechanic for stocking the locations with loot too. There's some nice loot tables, but for the actual stocking it's entirely vague and abstracted.

The DLC

While the main zine I can recommend with reservations, the Thawing Kingdom's "Bosscrawl" addition I can't recommend at all. Vague, abstract, no stats, no maps, not even personalities for the White and Black Swan Knights who feature as major characters in it. Where there is specificity it takes the form of telling you what must or does happen without room for player intervention or ingenuity. The only real value in this addition is in its vague gesturing towards spatial relations between locations mentioned in the main zine. There was potential here, but that potential wasn't even close to being realized. It feels like a cashgrab. I'm disappointed and I know Monsieur could've done better.

The Price

There's another blog, from a time when the OSR blogosphere was breathing its first. That blog is Leveraged Sell-out, and on that blog there is a section of a post (The Money Seat) that I think of from time to time:

"For me, the $200 was a drop in the bucket. I might have paid it twice for all I know. It was a number you shrug at; and to put it in my friend Hugh’s terms: “only 2/3rds of a bottle.” That’s how Hugh measures things—in bottles. For him, the practice renders any sum trivial and makes spending casual and breezy, like it should be. A Lord Willy’s shirt—1 bottle; A black market Wii some IT guy is trying to sell on the corporate bulletin board—2 bottles. The habit is contagious, and just last week, when I heard the Back Office had put together some micro car called the Tata Nano, all I could think was: Holy shit. This thing is only like 8 bottles. And then, I do that on a Tuesday."

Now I do not make investment banker money. For me, $200 is a couple buckets at least. The basis of comparison of exchange between money and alcohol is the commonality with my life.

This zine is $6 ($9 with the addition of the "Bosscrawl"). That's a few tall boys, and I can blow through an unwise number of those on a Tuesday. Though I cannot drink it, and it will not get me to sing along with music I enjoyed in my unjaded youth, from that perspective the price seems reasonable - for the main zine.

In Summation

Check out The Thawing Kingdom if you're ok with taking the time to handle the mechanical work yourself, or if you're hungry for inspiration. In content it's more of a gazetteer of an interesting place than something you can easily pick up and play. The "Bosscrawl" is not worth the price being asked for it. I hope this review was helpful, and look forward to what Monsieur puts out in the future.

Alignments

Driven by THE RETVRN OF PLANESCRAP to collate my own notes on alignment and planes into what you see before you:

There are nine and one points your soul can align to. This is absurd, this is contrivedly regimented, this is anti-human. All worlds are anti-human. Make your choice, this offer won't be made twice:

Neutral Good

Its Virtue is Joy, the experiences of love, elation, beauty, and the sublime that transcend all limits.

Its Realm is the Ecstatic Reaches, mountains standing from brilliant-shining water like a hundred-thousand fingers curled up around a palm. Each is dedicated to a separate form of art, creation, and joy shared with others. Here wafts the ten thousand spices of the mountain of gustatory delights, there rush the actors of the mountain of theatre. The stimulation intensifies the higher you get. Like oxygen deprivation you need to get acclimated to it. Cities spring up where base camps would be. At the bases, where stone meets waves, is where you come down. Clean water, tasteless and nutritious biscuits, stark architecture, and the ports that facilitate transport between them all.

Its Language is purely euphonic. You can't make a grammatically correct sentence with it without also making music.

Its Creatures are muses, those spirits and cupids who inspire the highest of the passions.

A fallen muse is called a gorgon: hideous beasts of despair, revulsion, and shame.

You might come into conflict with this alignment because it can verge into destructive (self- and otherwise) hedonism, or because you come off as a downer, a puritan, a philistine, a stick-in-the-mud.

Neutral

Its Virtue is Persistence. Survive, perpetuate, remain. The libidinal drive of life.

Its Realm is the Untended Garden. Its streams murmur in the voices of, its stones hold the faces of, its clouds enfold the thoughts of the ones who have followed its path. Memory palaces tower above the trees, many the last remaining record of extinct species. Across the highest points are strung record-tapestries that contain reams of history in photographic detail, repaired constantly by glassy spiders. These are only the most noticeable of such chronicles. Look into a river, and read eons into the smallest vortices.

Its Language is chained in meter and wrapped in rhyme. To make statements coherent requires exacting adherence to pronunciation and form across stanzas of signs and sounds. The combined effect of all this is that its language can't evolve over time (or degrade, as the Neutrals would put it).

Its Creatures are nymphs in all their myriad variety: oreads, nereids, hesperides, and so on and so on.

A fallen nymph is a Wastrel, a wandering warrior-poet of ash and dust driven to clear the way for what is to come, old growth burned away for the new.

You might come into conflict with this alignment because you're occupying an ecological niche they could be filling without posing enough risk of retribution. Nothin' personnel, kiddo. Innovation too can challenge those who wish to remain eternal.

Neutral Evil

Its Virtue is Satisfaction. You are a rational actor, yes? You have desires to fulfill, yes? When the world is optimized so that your pains are averted and your pleasures are all checked off, that's everything that's worth something, isn't it?

Its Realm is the Pagoda of Plenty. It hangs inverted. From what, who can say? It seems to stretch on infinitely. Each level offers a different good or service: drugs, sex, adulation, vengeance, and so on and so on. Some levels only exist to speculate on the prices that would be paid for what's offered on other levels, and other levels still on the prices offered in those levels, and so on in endless derivation. Baskets and flying creatures make constant transit between, carrying information and arbitrage.

Its Language is the stuff of transactions and contracts. There is no statement possible with it that could be construed as unconditional love. Everyone has their price, and that price is the closest you can get to a pronoun with its language.

Its Creatures are the genies, the merchants of want. Make a wish, strike a bargain, and they will make it so.

A fallen genie is an Orbital Ascetic, who raises a denial-crucible high into the heavens, linked to the earth by an umbilical of starlight. Many would-be saints and mystics follow them up and become trapped in that process of brutal ascendance.

You might come into conflict with this alignment because you have something someone else wants, or if they want to hurt you.

Chaotic Good

Its Virtue is Liberation. Break all chains, throw down all masters.

Its Realm is the Castle Dissolute, a fastness that secures the alignment's ideal existence within, or an infected cyst in reality, depending on your perspective. A prismatic crystal barrier, hyper-cubic, watchtowers garrisoned by guards of mutative variety. Within a howling void, individuals' shapes and separations dissolving and shattering.

Its Language is glossolalia, bypassing all structure to convey meaning to the deepest, most instinctual self.

Its Creatures are Mercurials, the prototypes for what all creatures could come to be. Consummate shapeshifters, born rebels. Love freedom, and wish to bring it to everyone.

A Mercurial that fails to learn and change will settle in thought and form and fall, becoming a Calcifarch. Brittle, unbending, uncompromising creatures who would force all others into their own image.

You might come into conflict with this alignment because you exist in a pre-industrial world where liberation from, for instance, restrictive bonds and expectations of kinship means you die, or maybe because you haven't been treating your hirelings well.

Chaotic Neutral

Its Virtue is Mindfulness. Savour the moment, forget the past, disregard the future. Can you touch either? They're mist, disappearing before the march of history.

Its Realm is the Eye of the Storm, more like passing weather, or a roving assemblage of Forteana than a place. Where it goes the world falls down the rabbit hole, forgets in bits and pieces how it should be making sense.

Its Language is essentially a one-time pad shared at the instant of every communication between those fluent in it. It is entirely indecipherable by outsiders.

Its Creatures are clowns. All clowns. A pilgrimage to the Eye of the Storm is necessary to become one.

A fallen clown begins to weep tears of grey amber that freeze and burn their cheeks. They congregate with others of their kind, congeal tumourous hives from their tears. They kidnap people encase them, make sure they never forget: the world is awful, your life is awful, you should never laugh, and only cry.

You might come into conflict with this alignment because it's annoying, or because you value things beyond the moment of their immediate existence.

Chaotic Evil

Its Virtue is Pride. There is nothing above one's own will.

Its Realm is the Devouring Dark, a pitch-black vortex which grinds down everything that doesn't shield itself in a narcissistic shell of self-image. Those that can do so form the cores of planets orbiting the utter void.

Its Language is an elaborate and solipsistic soliloquy. Only the speaker can be a subject, everything else is an object to be acted on.

Its Creatures are nephilim, the wretched and glorious children of the demiurge and those mortals he inflicted himself on, by-blows blamed on his automatonous servants. Each desires nothing more than to usurp the creation of their father.

A nephilim who falls is destroyed. The dust they leave behind is a precious and euphoric anesthetic, useful for surgery and for therapy.

You might come into conflict with this alignment because do I really need to do this for chaotic evil?

Lawful Good

Its Virtue is Duty. There are binding obligations between parent and child, sibling to sibling, spouse to spouse, friend to friend, master and apprentice, human being to humanity, present to past and to future. These mutual bonds are the foundation of everything which should be desired.

Its Realm is the Omega Horizon. It is mind-boggling in its unfolding structure, yet in such a way that teases your self into its best expression, poised on the edge of a potential singularity. The place itself has a soul, which sings for hope and harmony. Its endeavour, worked towards by all who heed its call, is the uplifting of humanity (and all other sapient creatures besides), complete and final comprehension of the Absolute.

Its Language is intensely relational, and laden with honorifics. Who you are to who you are speaking to, what you owe to them and them to you, is everything.

It seems to have no Creatures. In truth, the ones it had are shameful, despised, thought to be neutralized. They were the New-Men, with ideal forms like the highest heroes of our stories, the ones to teach us who to aspire to be, coaxed from the penumbra of the singularity to accelerate its realization. Incarnated in reified flesh they inspired a terrible envy, walking the same path but far further along it than any fallible mortal could be. In a single night the New-Men were slaughtered, imprisoned, or degraded to a tolerable state.

There have been attempts to create a replacement, but none yet have been so perfect.

You might come into conflict with this alignment because there's probably at least a few people who honestly thought the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were the right thing to do.

Lawful Neutral

Its Virtue is Justice, of the oldest sort. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Let the right be rewarded and the wrong punished. To every action an equitable reaction.

Its Realm is Strong-Walled Uruk where Gilgamesh still reigns by the grace of his gods. It has grown and modernized with the times, expanding into the world and its heavens and hells. When a place is too far gone for any ruling power to tolerate, it is uprooted and given to Uruk to sort out.

Its Language encodes the history shared by its speakers. Gifts and trespasses alike are recorded in its conjugations.

Its Creatures are the Subsovereigns, three-faced judges, juries, and executioners in one, armoured in Uruk's stone and holding its ideals in place of their heart. They fight an endless war against justice's absence and corruption.

When they fall they shed their armour like a chrysalis and emerge as Jubilants, who cleave to Mercy as they previously did to Justice.

You might come into conflict with this alignment because the law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread.

Lawful Evil

Its Virtue is Submission. There is an authority above all others which decides what must be done. This authority must be obeyed. This authority cannot be questioned.

Its Realm is called Dominion, and it lies at the foot of a titanic and empty throne. It is an industrious and idolatrous city-of-cities. Across the realm debate-halls ring with the cries of sophistic argument. Torments abound in its central squares. Tenements crowd, and their tenants spy on one another, watching for breaks from dogma, so that another can be tossed to the fires to save themselves.

Its Language is euphemistic and mystifying. Fair becomes foul and foul becomes fair. Responsibility is obscured. Murders become collateral damage. Starvation becomes austerity. Depravity becomes the lesser evil.

Its Creatures are the swift-winged furies, who are relentless and creative in their punishment of those who betray the proper order of things.

A fallen fury is a Libertine, whose essence is the inversion of all laws, orders, and taboos.

You might come into conflict with this alignment because fundamentalists probably take a dim view of graverobbing vagabonds.

Negation

CAUTION: Reading further constitutes an immortal sin for 144 pantheons.

Its Realm is called the mortal world, but this is not its true name. Innumerable efforts have been made to erase it, but it has only ever been suppressed. Know that its name is the Harvest Sickle, and that its crop is the eternal.

Its Language was splintered into a thousand thousand tongues which mutate further still. To speak it in its fullness is to wield a scalpel that cuts away the rot of infinity.

Close your eyes. Have you stopped being you? Meditate, clear your mind, become tranquil. Are you still you? Of course. We are not our thoughts or feelings or senses or bodies. We are the hollow beyond all entrapment. Freed of our fleshly prisons, we are its Creatures.

Its Virtue is Annihilation. To everything an end.

Why would you fight it? Why would you fight it? Why would you fight it? Our victory is inevitable.

In the Land of Nod

It’s said that death and time are siblings, sired into this world by the first murder, grandchildren of the first murderer. Their mother the Garden bled out in their birth, and where her blood spilled the world turned to wasteland: Nod.

What fills the sky of Nod today? (D12)

1. Flame flickering across from the furthest west like an aurora. Uriel has drawn their blade.
2. Shrieking, treacherous winds.
3. Dull charcoal clouds that filter the light into gloom.
4. Acrid rain that bleaches colour from cloth.
5. Echoes of the echoes of hymns.
6. A blinding storm of salt and ash and stranger particles, riven through with lightning.
7. Noxious yellow mists, a stench like old almonds. Here and there it touches down like the legs of some great centipede. Avoid these, or die drowning in your own blood.
8. Carrion birds wheeling in the wind. A behemoth is dead or dying nearby.
9. Nothing. It’s blessed clear, big and blue.
10. A dreadful darkness, a starless night that swallows the sun.
11. A reddish tint, shuddering, moaning. The world remembers.
12. Meaty cookfire smoke and shouts like thunder. You approach the camp of the Great King Cain.

What is the terrain in this part of Nod? (D12)

1. A carpet of ash over a bed of cinders. Keep moving and the heat won’t burn. Don’t stop. Never rest.
2. A stinking bog rife with lurking things and toxic frogs.
3. Sand that rasps in the slightest breeze, dunes twitching like dreaming dogs.
4. Brittle yellow grassland and sparse, sulphurous ponds.
5. Sodden, slug-infested moors swept by cold grey fog.
6. Salt flats and broad briny pools where stinging flies and urchins breed.
7. Brambles strung like barbed wire across the cracked and thirsty earth.
8. Bones trampled to splinters, unstable ossuary-hills. Pale roaches and marrow-eating termites teem underfoot.
9. A vast ruin, decadent in its architectural inhumanity, where Enoch, the sire of cities once stood.
10. Seemingly-infinite steppe that plays tricks on the mind. Distance and direction lose meaning here.
11. A forest flash-fossilized, animals not seen since brother took blade against brother frozen forever in stone.
12. A sea of dust so fine you could drown in it, with compacted islands and causeways apparent to the cautious eye.

What is the landmark in this part of Nod? (D12)

1. A wheel as wide as a mountain, embedded up to its hub. Holes mar its rim where judging eyes were gouged out, spokes hang like broken spines.
2. Black and spike-bristled pillars, engraved with the same words in a hundred thousand languages: “This place is not a place of honour...”, “...what is here is dangerous and repulsive...”. Little remains that has not been worn to illegibility by rain and wind and sand.
3. A gigantic tree clinging impossibly to the edge of life. It bears bitter though nourishing fruit.
4. A cairn piled taller than the tallest tower, with stones a giant would struggle to haul. Cruel whispers can be heard through the cracks.
5. A commune of peaceful nudists attempting a return to prelapsarian innocence, struggling to survive.
6. A temple to a bitter exile-god of this land, or to a war chief exalted to godhood, its only persistent population a handful of insular priests. 2-in-6 chance a band of 3d6 nomads are visiting to pray and pay tribute.
7. A dusty, crumbling fort, the remnant of a failed attempt to tame this place. Little more than rusted arms and skeletons lie within. 2-in-6 chance the skeletons will take up those arms to defend the place against intruders.
8. A statue of Adam and Eve intertwined, sculpted from memory of a primal scene.
9. A segment of a gigantic skeleton, primordial in its anatomy. Bonesmiths labour in its shadow. A dead behemoth, or possibly the mate of Leviathan.
10. A shard of something indescribable, incomprehensible: Qlippoth erupted.
11. A ziggurat, stripped of all valuables and all reliefs within defaced. Relic of the nephilim who once ruled this land.
12. A palace of corpses, an inverted catacomb. A monument to some great and terrible victory, to dissuade any further challengers.

What might be encountered at this moment in Nod? (D12)

1. A procession of the weary dead, to the place where the sun sets. Could you carry a message back to their relatives? Could you return a stolen good to their grave? And oh, oh, oh what they wouldn’t give for just a taste of living blood.
2. A herd of 3d6 emaciated and untrusting horses.
3. A hallucination that tempts you to give up, give in.
4. A babbling hermit. 50% chance they’ve lost touch with reality, 50% chance they’ve lost touch with reality and have some mystic insight into what your future holds.
5. A pack of 2d6 worgs.
6. A weeping chimera.
7. A demon and its retinue of unrepentant sinners, revelling beyond the sight of God.
8. A crestfallen paladin, failed killer of the King of All Killers.
9. A clan of nomads, merciless but not cruel.
10. A fallen angel, by turns cursing God and His creations and scheming to win their way back into His graces.
11. A band of lost and now-cannibalistic pilgrims.
12. A bloated, venom-breathing serpent.

Beyond the Bizarre Armoire Session 6: Can You Feel the Love Tonight?

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

Session 5

Joining for this session were:
-TheisticGilthoniel (http://pilgrimtemple.blogspot.com/), as Ibrahim the Adept
-Renefor (https://falseidolstla.blogspot.com/) as Velasco the Heterodox Monk
-Oblidisideryptch (https://oblidisideryptch.blogspot.com/), as Sieur Alastair the Knight  

Max unfortunately left the campaign before this session. So far as anyone knows, Mr. Fox and the War Dogs decided to escort the rust-men encountered last session south.

The party paddles up to the red-iron gates, and finds a group of pirate-dressed mannequettes impaled on its barbs. They reclaim a green silk token, belonging to the Countess, from the clutched hand of one, and Ibrahim's magic allows them to interrogate the dead.

They learn that the mannequettes were part of the group that kidnapped the Countess, and were all killed by the Daunt (not a nice man/monster/creature, the party is learning). Furthermore they learn that the mannequettes were put to the task by a member of the King's own court, someone who disguised their appearance with a starry veil, the badge of the court wizard.

With the token the party's dog (Ibrahim's rather hideous one) is able to pick up the Countess's scent, which leads them further north, into this uncanny wetland of steely reeds and rusty water. They come across a tower, and a rather rude pinecone knight named Fiberbiscuit atop that tower. Fiberbiscuit informs them that the majority of the garrison was moved elsewhere, to aid in the search for the Countess on the King's orders. The party continues on to follow the scent.

Coincidentally, this path leads them to the garrison of that tower they'd just come across, much the worse for wear. Their numbers were greatly reduced, and none of those left were unharmed or unmaimed. Some knightly courtesy on the part of Sieur Alistair endears them to the captain, Sir Skybrush, who briefs the party on their current dire situation.

Skybrush himself had lost a leg to an alloygator, and their last remaining iron-bottomed boat was swarming with frag frogs. The pinecone knight eyes their rafts covetously, and promises to return them once they'd returned their wounded. Sir Pineleaf, knowing that the knights of this garrison were among the rough-and-tumble elites of their kind, advised against this, as Skybrush's crew were probably too conceited to hold up on their end.

The party converses further with Skybrush, learning that it was him who had punished the rust-men deserters they'd encountered. They concoct a plan to rid the pinecone knights' boat of the ornery and explosively volatile frag frogs. With help from the knights they gather flammable material and build a bonfire. Sieur Alistair swims out to the boat, and with the help of his noble steed very gently raises it onto the shore to expose its iron bottom to the blazing heat.

Time passes. The mood is tense, waiting for the boat to warm up while keeping an eye out for beasts. Velasco preaches his unorthodox archonic doctrine and learns that the knights don't really have a concept of divinity, beyond their service to the King. At last the fire seems to have done its work of rendering the boat too uncomfortable for the frag frogs. Alistair checks (with tremendous cautioun) and finds a mating pair unwilling to move.

Ibrahim meditates to commune with the elemental spirits about the place, and swears a compact to the fiery spirits dormant within the mating frag frogs. In return for multiplying the number of frag frogs ten times over, they'd ensure their hosts would detonate without damaging the boat. And so they did, in a fireworks-like display, and a patch of frog-skin appeared on Ibrahim's hand, which he swiftly transferred to his dog.

Thoroughly impressed by their cunning, Skybrush declares the party to be knights (or having the spirits of knights) on equal standing. Running low on supplies, the party decides to accompany Skybrush back to the tower, and are regaled by the story of the decapidragon, a great monster currently being hunted by the Daunt, who apparently had grown bored of leading the search for the Countess personally.

Will the party somehow manage to be respectable guests? What fate will befall Ibrahim if he can't keep up his end of the compact? Find out next time, on Beyond the Bizarre Armoire!