GLOGtober Day 7: What Causes That Strange Black Lightning?

It's another zine:

GLOGtober Day 1: Collaboration with Filth Pig (Not Safe For Work But You Shouldn't Be Reading RPG Blogs At Work Anyways, You Slacker)

Friend of the blog Filth Pig over at The Slopyard has agreed to collaborate for the first day of GLOGtober (atemporal).

The subject of our collaboration is monsters. Each of us made 3 images of monsters for the other to interpret as they will. One of his images has a vagina for a mouth. A real image of a real vagina, photoshopped. I didn't request the vagina-mouth, matter of fact if I knew that getting a monster with a vagina-mouth was a possibility I would've specifically requested not to receive one. That's the trouble with collaborating with pseudonymous internet acquaintances: it's like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. However the die's been cast, the Rubicon crossed, the Rubik's cube solved to the last colourful square. There's no going back. It's a matter of principle. I can't just throw Filth Pig's work back in his face now that I've received it. A man's work is like his baby. Would you throw a baby? Like it was a football? I certainly hope not.

Anyways it's not spoilered or censored or anything so if you don't want to see the vagina-mouth monster close this tab now:

 

Cerebrellus

There are dogs bred to hunt, to herd, as companions, even as dog-fighters. Perhaps strangest of all are those dogs bred to think.

The cerebrellus is the most famous of the thinking dog breeds, which isn't saying much as all such breeds are abominations that are most often purged from history wherever they're found. It was once the sole property of the inquisitor-nuns of the Unspoken Censor, but a century ago a breeding pair was stolen and their inbred descendants can now be found in the company of secret policemen, inhumane scholars, and similar sorts.

These unpleasant creatures do not do their own thinking. They collate the thinking of others, and synthesize new thoughts through this collation. They collate the thinking of others by sucking out their cerebrospinal fluid. This process is generally agreed to be exceedingly painful.

Each cerebrellus must be trained from puppyhood to be sensitized to the psychic currents of particular sorts of thoughts. One might be trained to think about engineering (and leave a trail of mauled engineers behind it even as it designs bridges any one of those engineers could never even dream of), another might be trained to sort through the contradictions in a theological tradition. The competition to possess a  cerebrellus specialized in a particularly esoteric field can become bloody indeed.

Urgrom the Unvrivalled

If you think of time as like a multitude of serpents racing to reach the crown of a narrowing tree, shoving each other down and around or even off the tree entirely in their competition, you will be slightly less wrong than those who think of time like a straight arrow flying from the universe's beginning to its end.

These serpents are the many timelines, their supremacy or failure created by perception as much as by brute physics, swapping places as history's rewritten.

Urgrom comes from a timeline that lost its struggle entirely, falling into the void beyond potential where colourless green ideas sleep furiously. He survived because he was the best-documented being within it, a god-emperor who ruled from the strangling heights of the upper air to the world's burning heart. He's become much reduced, his divine ancestor extinguished before the neolithic in his new reality, but still mighty.

This dethroned emperor does not miss his reign, but he does mourn his hundred-strong harem which he loved with a passion that would literally explode a more mortal heart. They now exist, and have only ever existed, in his memories.

He spends what remains of his long, long life building magnificent memorials to them, to anchor their spirit in the world. He raises halls of glittering sapphires to reflect the thousand bottomless eyes of Yzchawxiel, who awaited his return from campaign at the pinnacle of his palace, lava-spewing siphons for Nukavira, and so on and so on, without rest. Those who despoil these memorials are crushed under the mountain of his fury.

The Smackalope

At dawn on the sixth day, the heavenly host gathered and squabbled over the pile of parts left from the fifth.

Their squabbling birthed riotous creation. To the wolves, fangs were granted, to horses hooves. Humanity, to the envy of all others, received the Word.

As the light waned the pile of parts grew smaller and smaller, until only a smattering was left. Shrugging their shoulders, the angels stuck that smattering together and created the smackalope.

"What the fuck?!" the angels cried, "This sucks, why did we do this", and brought down the veil of night so that they would no longer have to look upon it.

The LORD, who had just come back from killing Leviathan's mate and thus was too bloodied to see clearly, took pity on the smackalope and granted it immortality.

And so to this day we must dread the slap of the smackalope.

GLOGtober Day 3: Magic (Orbs); Or: D100+ Ominous Orbs

It continues: https://sunderedshillings.blogspot.com/2021/09/glogtober-21-back-with-vengeance.html

Today's offering: D100+ Ominous Orbs

Click the button below to generate your orb, generator made with Slight Adjustment's generator generator:

Random Racist Political Pamphlets

The printing press was a revolutionary invention, allowing the spread of ideas on a scale never before imaginable. Some of those ideas (racism, freemasonry, etc.) were bad. This is a generator for those sorts of pamphlets.

Warning: Not all pamphlets may be racist.

Generator made with friend of the blog Spwack's thing here.

The raws:

{pamphlet}

pamphlet
This pamphlet blames {theonesbehindit} for {issue}. It's got {pampfeat -u} and {pampfeat -u}. This pamphlet was printed by {printer}. The general reaction to this pamphlet has been {reaction}.
This pamphlet advocates {action} {theonesbehindit} to solve {issue}. It's got {pampfeat -u} and {pampfeat -u}. This pamphlet was printed by {printer}. The general reaction to this pamphlet has been {reaction}.

theonesbehindit
the elves
the dwarves
a minority religious group
organized religion
a secret society
the rich
the poor
the middle class
the rural population
the urban population
Southerners
Easterners
Northerners
Westerners
the orcs
wizards
vampires
men
women
tieflings
the old
the young
reptilian infiltrators
intellectuals

issue
rising grain prices
waning practice of cultural traditions
the trade deficit
a slew of natural disasters
the ravaging spread of a new drug
the dead rising from their graves
disinformation
terrorist attacks
foreign espionage
shortages of industrial materials
a serial killer on the loose
the younger generation's lack of respect
recent mysterious disappearances
border tensions
the plague
excessive taxation
government corruption
territorial losses
declining public morality
the national debt crisis
political polarization

action
waging war on
seizing the property of
eating
exiling
re-educating
enslaving
humiliating
subjugating
launching an inquisiton against

printer
a{quality} craftman's guild
a{quality} experimental artist trying to get their name out there
an enigmatic party whose true identity is the subject of many dubious theories
a{quality} university press
a{quality}, wealthy merchant
a{quality}, traumatized military officer
a{quality}, downwardly-mobile aristocrat
a bohemian gathering of indolent merry-makers
a dissident priest insired by a prophetic vision (and possibly hallucinogens)
a lone crank

quality
 constipated
n obcurantist
 furious
 mysticism-obsessed
 flamboyant
 manic
 melancholic
 snide
n alcoholic
 geriatric
 goatish
 brittle

pampfeat
{textthing} type
{illuthing} illustrations
{paperthing} paper

textthing
over-sized
spidery
smudged
typo-rife
sparse
miniscule
crooked
poorly-kerned
crowded
elegant

illuthing
faded
obscene
incredibly detailed
childish
plagiarized
grainy
overlapping
blasphemous
gory
diagrammatized

paperthing
stained
yellowed
ragged
inexpertly-folded
moldy
brownish
bleached-white
high-quality
rough
dog-earred

reaction
rabid conflict between supporters and opponents
ironic adoption
a call for criminalizing such agitations
apathy
mob violence directed against those related to the pamphlet
the foundation of a secret society dedicated to fulfilling the pamphlet's goals
a crackdown on the free press
further conspiracizing
amusement, with a popular satirical play being created based on it
mockery and scorn
a small but zealous following
abject disgust

Technological Meta-Monster: The Glitchling

Long time no see, how ya been.

The sleep of reason produces monsters. Alas, so too does reason produce monsters in its waking hours. Our refined machines of logic and silicon are haunted by ghosts, crawling with bugs. What began in Man's mind progresses ever further from Man.

Credit to Everythings

The glitchling is one such monster.

You don't put it in a dungeon. You don't play it at a table. It comes into existence when there is no table to play at.

When playing a game online and something goes wrong with the technology you're using, there's a chance that a glitchling is spawned into that game. Set the chance to your liking (recommended settings: Easy mode - 1 in 20, MERCILESS - always spawns).

As of yet there have been three "species" of glitchling discovered. Their nature is based on the error that produced them. No doubt many more wait in potential, waiting for the catastrophe that will be their birth.

Glitchling Base Stats:
HD: 2
AC: As chain
Move: As monkey, can "noclip" through thin obstacles
Attack: 1d4, touch leaves wounds as if pixelated chunk of victim has simply been deleted.
Morale: 6, fleeing glitchlings will temporarily despawn, see Tech Malfunction below.
Appearance: Scrawny grey-green cortical homunculus. Black screen eyes. Trackpad fingertips.
Smell: Burning plastic
Tech Malfunction: The glitchling is merely the avatar of a more lingering sort of curse. Destroy it or drive it away and it will simply respawn in 1d6 10-minute turns. The curse is bound to a random object in the party's inventory, selected when the glitchling first spawns. The way to detect and remove this curse depends on the variant of the glitchling, per below:

Glitchling Variants:

Visual
Cause: Born from video lag, image upload issues, and the like.
Appearance Modifier: Polygonal or pixelated, minor lag and skipping when it moves.
Motivation: Obscure what you want to find, reveal what you want to hide.
Tech Malfunction Modifier: The curse-bearing object becomes clouded with visual artifacts. The curse is lifted by exposing it to either blinding light or total darkness.
Ability - Censor Bar: Each round the glitchling can select a single creature, object, or environmental feature. Any sensory details about that object beyond its general position are removed, blocked off by a black square (or the audible, olfactory, etc., equivalent).

Audial
Cause: Born from issues with the reception and transmission of sound.
Appearance Modifier: Speaker-funnel mouths, warped ears, bass-boosted voices, tongues like heaphone mics.
Motivation: Incite beautiful tragedy, discord, and dissonance.
Tech Malfunction Modifier: The curse-bearing object quietly buzzes and hums. The curse is lifted by matching the sound's tone, with a crystal cup or metal fork or whatever else you can find.
Ability - Dogwhistle: Once every 1d6 rounds the glitching can shriek and provoke a roll on the random encounter table. It can also ventriloquize and mimic any voice it's heard before.

Connective
Cause: Born from failure to connect to the internet.
Appearance Modifier: Flesh made of wires, wheezing server in chest.
Motivation: Ruin your interpersonal connections. Sour friendships, scare off hirelings, piss off potential enemies.
Tech Malfunction Modifier: The curse-bearing object is stuck to the stuff around it by fine, glassy threads. The curse is lifted by preventing it from attaching to any solid objects for 1d6 rounds.
Ability - Proxy Hijack: Once per round the glitchling can steal an object that someone it can see is holding or wearing.

D12 Ensorcelled Scabbards

http://myarmoury.com/feature_anatomy.html

There's enough magic swords floating around out there I bet could run a game every day for a decade and still not run out of new ones to stock your hoards.

You know what I haven't seen too many of? Magic scabbards. Can't have a sword without a scabbard. It'd be inconvenient to carry, and vulnerable to rust. Here's twelve (D12) of them:

1. A History of Its Violence: Appears as an ornate, leather-bound book. Its cover is decorated with heraldry and images of clashing swords that change day-by-day. Its pages are normally blank, but a sword plunged into them will dissolve into ink and spread into words across them. These words will describe the entirety of its past and properties in exhaustive, boring detail that would take days to get through. Running your hand across the words lets you draw the sword again.

2. Deeper Goes The Crimson Ocean: A scabbard of rusted iron and polished mahogany. It is carved with flocks of bats in flight. The scabbard contains the blood of every victim of a sword it's held, which disappears into the scabbard the moment it's spilled, and is rendered weightless and uncoagulating. This is great for cleaning up crime scenes. If tipped out the blood flows from the scabbard's throat. It currently contains a large pond's worth of blood.

3. Scabbard of the Empty-Handed Warrior: Made of silver fir, adorned with delicate curlicues of actual silver. Anything can be placed in this scabbard, and drawn out as a sword of the same material. Most materials will probably make shitty swords, and break on a critical failure. If you don't put anything in, you can draw a sword of air that dissipates on any failure. As an example, if you put in a cockatrice's corpse, the sword will retain its petrifying power (until it breaks because it's made of meat, feathers, and bone). Other materials may have their own particular properties, even if they're subpar and break easily (e.g. obsidian, smoke, wight's finger, etc.).

4. The Serpent Sheathes: A trio of nigh-immortal snakes, sibilant siblings of uncertain origin. Each can swallow blades of a certain size, and if fed with living prey regurgitate those blades coated in their venom. If one could find a way to speak with them, they be a valuable, if serpentinely biased, source of history. They can't stand each other anymore and will refuse to be carried in the same party:
-Kipoka: White and purple. Delicate enough to wrap around one's wrist. Can swallow daggers, and nothing bigger. Her poison inflicts blindness on a failed save, and lasts for 1d12 strikes. She prefers animals no smaller than a squirrel.
-Dhaifuka: Red and yellow. Bears a spiny rattle on the tip of his tail. Can be worn as a belt. Swallows blades as big as longswords, and must be fed with a goat, or a pile of rabbits to regurgitate them. His poison halves a victim's strength on a failed save, and lasts for 1d8 strikes.
-Fuvuka: Black and green. Her tongue bulges obscenely. Must be draped around one's shoulders, if she is to be carried at all. Her poison causes death by throbbing of the brain on a failed save, and lasts for 1d4 strikes. She will accept nothing less than a horse to surrender the greatswords she swallows.

5. The Scamp's Stick: A gnarled wooden scabbard. While your sword's sheathed in it, it will appear as a simple walking stick, and you will appear as a feeble beggar, not even worth the effort of harassing. While it's in its walking stick form and used to support you, you can move at a normal pace even if you're exhausted and your legs are mangled.

6. Trucebringer: Made of olive-wood and burnished brass. It bears carvings of clasped hands. If Trucebringer holds a sword that has not yet been drawn, any others within 30 feet must contest its bearer in strength to be able to draw or nock their own weapon. If a treaty is sworn upon the scabbard, either party immediately becomes aware if the other breaks its terms.

7. Whispering Wind: A scabbard of clouded and rippling crystal. Swords drawn from it become invisible, and intangible to those they strike. Wounds dealt by such swords do not appear and take effect until after the swords have been returned to the scabbard. The appearance of wounds is accompanied by a rush of air towards its bearer's location.

8. Duelist's Delight: Made from bands of aspen and yew bound by rings of dark steel. Each round its bearer wields it in one hand they can decide whether it acts as a +1 shield, or a +1 club, with any penalties for dual-wielding with the latter being halved. Regardless of local custom, any blade drawn from it will be accepted as its wielder's weapon in a duel.

9. The Yearning Grasp: A scabbard of sticky willow-wood, decorated with gentle arcs of magnetite. If no weapon is within it, its bearer can attempt to draw a weapon within 30 feet into it. If that weapon is held by another they must save vs. wands to hold onto it, with a cumulative penalty of 2 each turn its bearer concentrates on the weapon. The scabbard adjusts its shape to fit the weapon.

10. The Spellsword's Sheathe: Adorned with purple-and-gold cloth. If its bearer succeeds in a save against a spell, there is a 2-in-6 chance that the sheathe will capture the spell. The next time a sword is drawn from it, it will cast that captured spell on the first target it strikes. The sheathe can contain only one spell at a time. While it contains a spell the gold sections of it emit a soft glow.

11. What Sound Prudence: A scabbard made of shark-leather, with a damascened locket and chape. When held, its bearer may consider fighting someone or something in their line of sight, and receive a notion of the difference in their power by the way the scales of its leather feel. If they're weaker than their intended opponent, the scales will feel proportionately rougher, and likewise smoother if they're stronger.

12. Scarseer: A grotesque construction of severed keloid tissue stapled together with gleaming bronze. Its locket is decorated with a bushel of fur resembling a lion's mane. Once a day, its bearer can access a vision of someone who's been wounded by a sword drawn from it, as Clairvoyance.

GLOG Class: The Most Rangerous Ranger

Vayra over at The Mad Queen's Court has posted the following assessment of ranger and ranger-adjacent classes thus far made for the GLOG:

As you will note, none before have met all 16 criteria. This one does, making me the victor: King of the GLOG semiurge, GLOG emperor 1,000,000 years semiurge.

GLOG Class: The Most Rangerous Ranger
Starting Equipment: Two swords, bow, twenty arrows, hiking boots, waterproof cloak, bag of wound-staunching moss
A: Forager, Crazy As A Fox
B: Lay of the Land, Surefooted
C: Wild at Heart, Know Your Prey
D: Virtues of Beast & Bough

A

Forager: You get twice as much food and water when foraging³.

At Template B you can forage for materials to make into stuff instead of or in addition to food. For every inventory slot of rations you would get, you can instead get an item or collection of items that fill as many inventory slots that could conceivably be made of natural materials you've found⁸.

At Template C you can use this ability to make preternatural arrows with abilities based on the feathers they're fletched with as follows¹³:
-Songbird: You can ventriloquize a short statement at the arrow's point of impact.
-Owl: Arrow is totally silent.
-Swift: Arrow's range before taking penalties is doubled.
-Shrike: If arrow's target is within 5 feet of an environmental danger (pit, spikes, fire, etc.) they must save or be knocked into it.
-Penguin: Arrow moves through and can be loosed in water as though it were air.
-Hummingbird: Arrow can be made to curve around corners and otherwise not move in normal arc.
-Seagull: Arrow extinguishes fires it's shot through.
-Carrier Pigeon: Arrow has +2 to hit if you know target's name.
-Crow: Arrow deals minimum of 4 damage to undead targets.
-Vulture: Arrow has +1 to hit and damage if target is below half HP.
You can make one arrow per inventory slot you'd get foraging. Bird types must be around in area to make arrows. Other feather/power combos at DM's discretion.

Crazy As A Fox: If you're fighting in an unconventional yet stylish way (two swords¹⁶, biting, shooting bow with feet) you reduce any penalties by 2. At Template C you reduce penalties by 4¹.

B

Lay of the Land: The first time you enter a hex you can learn one of the following:
-What the weather will be for the rest of the day, and the following day¹¹.
-Sense if there's anything unnatural in the hex (natural magic, like a dryad, would not be sensed). Human constructions count as unnatural⁴.
-What the footprints of creatures on the hex's encounter table look like, and how big those creatures are.

Spending an hour familiarizing yourself with the area allows one of the following, potentially with some preconditions, or getting any of the previous options:
-Change the weather to be a step better or worse for the rest of the day/for the next day, if you've already predicted it. Changes take 1d6 hours to set in.
-The location of any lairs in the hex, if you know of those lairs' owners⁶.
-Surprise the next wilderness encounter you have².
-Intuit the particular type of unnatural feature you've learned is present.

Surefooted: Natural obstacles (scree, slopes, bogs, etc.) penalize your movement or climbing one step less than they normally would (e.g. move over plains as paved roads, hills as though they're plains, or however it might work in your game). This also works for travel times while hexcrawling⁵.

You leave no trace of your passage through natural environments unless you choose to (and can choose to leave misleading traces), and natural features such as a forest floor covered in dry leaves don't penalize your stealth checks¹⁰.

C

Wild at Heart: You can effectively talk to wild animals through body language, mimicking vocalizations, and so on. They're still dumb and probably not nearly as pro-social as humans, and so getting them to do what you want or even just getting useful information from them may be difficult⁹.

If you build a strong bond with an animal you can make it your companion. Your companion animal will be able to anticipate your orders and act according to your will without needing to be explicitly ordered to. It will also be well-behaved unless extremely stressed, so you don't need to worry about your hippo companion rampaging through the market, for example. You can only have one true companion animal at a time, and can't take a new one until your old one dies and you've appropriately mourned it⁷.

Know Your Prey: Once per day when attacking a creature you can list substantial and distinct facts about it (e.g. one fact about its appearance, one fact about its behaviour, one fact about its history, etc.). Each fact adds +1 damage, up to +3 if the facts are generic to the type of creature, and up to +6 if the facts are specific to the creature as an individual. Facts that have been used for a particular creature or type of creature can't be used again¹⁵.

D

Virtues of Beast & Bough: Once per day while foraging you can find a magic herb. The herb has an effect as a random spell when imbibed in a random manner, as per the tables below. Spells are cast with [sum] and [dice] of 1. Herbs last 1d6 days before they wilt to uselessness¹⁴:

This herb casts (D20):
1. Clarity
2. Reform
3. Detect Metals
4. Forget
5. Alter Self
6. Powerful Presence
7. Wizard Vision
8. Hold Person
9. Shrivel
10. Sleep
11. Fear
12. Rot
13. Grease
14. Cure Wounds
15. Vigour
16. Light
17. Olfactory Revelation
18. Protection from [Element]
19. Raise Spirit
20. Feather Fall
All spells per Skerples' Many Rats on a Stick GLOG. Thank you Skerples, great job! Add/remove spells at your discretion.

When (D6):
1. Its smoke is inhaled
2. Chewed
3. Brewed into tea
4. Ground and snorted
5. Crushed and rubbed on something
6. Jabbed with its thorns

In addition to the herb, you can also take a trophy from a dead magical monster that casts a spell related to its magical abilities (e.g. Blink for a blink dog's ear). Same rules as herbs wrt power and how long they last¹².

¹ First criterion

² Second criterion

³ Third criterion

⁴ Fourth criterion

⁵ Fifth criterion

⁶ Sixth criterion

⁷ Seventh criterion

⁸ Eighth criterion

⁹ Ninth criterion

¹⁰ Tenth criterion

¹¹ Eleventh criterion

¹² Twelfth criterion

¹³ Thirteenth criterion

¹⁴ Fourteenth criterion

¹⁵ Fifteenth criterion

¹⁶ Sixteenth criterion