The Hapless Henchman: 2016

Friday, December 9, 2016

On Hyperiridium

(reminded myself that I had an Evernote, and popped it open and found my fish-men solo adventure notes, as well as this, written in May 2015. Probably a way to tie Halthrag Keep and Space Dungeon to Black Powder Black Magic by +Eric Hoffman and +Carl Bussler but I can't recall off the top of my head if it had been released, then)

Hyperidium is described in the scientific literature by Dr. Allan Whipplemark-Smythe of Future Earth 124/4b in the year QE2027. The entry from Encyclopaedia Galactica is abstracted, here.

On Aereth it is known in some places as Bale-Iron and Dweomer-Ore, and Green Orichalc by Alchemists. It has the curious and ominous property that it feeds on ambient magical energy and becomes more dense without decreasing in volume - depending upon conditions it adds mass from some other place and time but retains its shape and form. It is especially common in Thrend, near the site of a meteor-fall that destroyed Halthrag Keep and turned the course of the Wizard Wars long ago (speculatively BE1078 +/- 7)

Any time an offensive spell is cast at a wielder of a Hyperidium weapon, attack and damage rolls (not Deed Dice!) are increased by +1d for the duration of the spell (which may allow, for instance only 1 attack in the case of instantaneous attacks). The wielder may choose to give up this bonus to convert and dissipate the spell energy, whereupon the weapon gives off a baleful and sickly blue-green glow, and the spell result is decreased by one result category OR the wielder gains a Luck point until the next sunrise/resting period, which may take him or her above the natural maximum. In the case of instantaneous non-spell attacks, one attempted strike by the bearer will be affected.

For a wearer of Hyperiridium armor or the bearer of a shield, the effective armor bonus is increased by 1d6 each time an offensive spell is cast at the wearer, which stacks up to the maximum of 6 (so a single spell or multiple spells might drive the AC bonus to the maximum of 6). In the case of instantaneous non-spell magical attacks, the next defended attack will be affected this way. Unfortunately, it is difficult to hide or remain hidden as the armor's evil blue-green sheen radiates tell-tale light and marks it as magical.

Large quantities of this refined metal attracts succubi, wights, and Crystalline Arachnoidae who lust after it. It is refined from meteoric ore and the process requires strong acids; the ore from which it comes gives off a sinister blue-green glow. Much suspicion and bad folklore is attached to it in areas where it is found, and these creatures will always attack or target those who possess this metal (or even quantities of the raw ore) first.

see also: Warp Stone; Greenstone shards; Kryptonite (various colours).

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Mashups, Closure, Thread Necromancy

(this was started back in the summer, maybe? trying to go back and finish off some lost trains of thought and so this represents some months of doodling and the chronology is weird)

At first, this kid is thinking "DAMMIT"

I been thinking, see, and I have felt a real creative flag in terms of output of interesting gaming content. I think it's the Roku I bought for 17 bucks at Staples - sapping my will away. Maybe it's the return of Game of Thrones. (editor's note: this must have sat a while in the draft box) I think G+ has taken a hard turn into commercialism and sharing of buyable shit that makes my skin crawl. I'm not a hipster, but it used to be a lot of content was shared freely, and now it seems like it's behind the pay-wall, somehow. I'm all about clue-ing people in to good stuff, and I like people to be reimbursed for their efforts but the G+ algorithm sends a great deal of kittie pictures, hot redheads, and Kickstarters my way. Could be the purpose of it, maybe, but we somehow subverted it a little before if you take my meaning. I'm sure that one book by that one guy is terrific, but I feel sort of like it's got some Hootie and The Blowfish Syndrome. You play me, or try to sell me, the same goddam song on the radio every 5 minutes and you and me both get diminishing returns. That being, you don't sell me that book (no matter how good it is), and I turn off the radio, Hootie. You follow? Can you dig it, hepcat?

About the best thing I can manage of late is a mashup, and there've been no end of mashups for me this past few months. I will put the peanut butter of DCC with any sort of chocolate, and so I've tried some Scooby-Doo/Space Dungeon mashup (it was good on paper), and this diesel-punk/Grease/Thundarr Mashup from a couple of ~~weeks~~ months ago. I'm afraid as in matters of the bedroom, I have little staying power in the game room and lose interest quickly after the initial excitement wears off. Sorry if I don't have the creative stamina to keep it up for the long haul... The flipside is, at least I'm often satisfied by explosive bursts of fun/novel/interesting stuff but whether others are is for them to decide. We're all responsible, after all, for our own gaming enjoyment and to communicate to others what we might wish to have happen at the table. Or else put up with it and be unhappy.

my first encounter with Amy Brightower indelibly affected my thinking, I'm sure.

I'm thinking of some juvenile/troma high/mutant crawl classics thing. Class of Nuke 'Em High/Return of the Living Dead thing. There's this old scandalous RPG illustrated by Erol Otus called Alma Mater, I think I wrote about it some time ago on here. Seems dimly amusing but the genre's the thing for me and maybe not the mechanics so much. I don't anticipate rolling interminable dice around a virtual table to simulate an experience I loathed 23 years ago!!! On the other hand, the archetypes of High School are endlessly appealing, and (there was a cartoon about this when I were a prepubescent lad called Galaxy High) I think it might benefit from some complication and transmogrification. But the premise is sort of interesting, to me. A befouled, Death Wish 2/Warriors/80 Blocks From Tiffany's urban metropolis full of Wasted Youths and (of course, it's me we're talking about, here) Deadly Unreliable Robots, Scrofulous Mutants, and Ionizing Radiation. edit: played this game during the summer, before Our President Elect was much more than a hilarious unlikelihood, and I'd like to return to it but I have no wish to go to the Camps in my middle age. Also, it seems to me that if I wait long enough, maybe a year or so, we'll either get a new President or Thundarr will come to pass at last... Wouldn't it be hilarious if all these post-apocalyptic Zombie fantasies we see on the screens really were TRAINING SCENARIOS FOR LIFE IN THE THEOCRATIC PRISON ZONES?

The America of 1986, now with more Grimdark! Coming in 2017!

Also, in terms of mashups, I proposed, and me and Doug K. and Michael S. toyed with a World Wide Wrestling/Space Dungeon mashup where the primary driver for the combination is to free myself and the other players from the constraints of physics, wrestling moves, and human anatomy and physiology. I think it shows much promise for hilarity, since it takes all the drama and melodrama of professional wrestling and also the wacky tech, dark magic, and sinister corporate shenanigans of my home-grown toy DCC setting (maybe you can join it and read it on G+ but it's in Hypersleep mode for the time being). WWW seems to me to be a terrific game, and all reports I have heard have been glowing (particularly from The Gauntlet podcast). I look forward to pile-driving it into submission and I think I will probably do some gimmicks for it (classes) although the built-in ones seem to me to encompass a lot of room to flex... +Nathan Paoletta has a great deal of terrific games: (find them HERE). I think I got into an early playtest version for WWW and I have thought about it a great deal, although I haven't played it straight, or run it myself, yet. I hadn't got much exposure to DW/PBtA when I stumbled on it, and it didn't make much sense, then. Now, I have more skills but it's a legit stretch to run it for me since it's not my usual genre/conventions/tone (hence my mashup!)

(hypocrisy noted) Also, I've gone through and invested in a couple of things - +Mike Evan's Kickstarter for Hubris delivered a final PDF product, which excites me very much. Gets my juices flowing. Since I drafted this post back in the Spring (gadzooks!) I also toyed with Beyond The Wall, which was maybe the most fun I've had gaming in a while - with a good group and some up-front bravery, you can have an amazing setting right from the start and the world-building and relationships go hand-in-hand. Lastly, I got +cecil howe 's very moody and evocative, and existentially chilly, add-on called "Do Not Let Us Die in The Dark Night of This Cold Winter". It's about trying to keep a quaint village from freezing and starving into non-existence, and since I cannot help to imagine what would happen if I combine this and that, I will probably try to build a village with some friends and BtW and THEN destroy it with winter. On reflection, it bums me out but it could be fun to play with a heater on and some hot chocolate and warm socks. Segue into a weird world beyond the village, and in comes the Hubris thing, we're golden. Some nefarious force is causing winter (not GoT, I know I know). I had a good character last year in Pinkie, the synthetic-man Cleric of Santa, but I digress.

Anyways, thanks for watching. You may have noticed I have not updated the DCC Class List for some time - my G+ associate +Stephen Murrish is ably keeping better track lately than I am able or inclined to do. If you catch broken links, let me know and I may or may not update them (a problem is the blogger app for iOS is shelved and doesn't work anymore, which partially explains my low frequency of postings...)

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

DCC Magical Heartbreaker

I have in my mind's eye: a fairly liberal, and rather confusing, kludge/tort/corruption for the magic system of DCC, but rather than write it down sensibly I think the basics might be best described in broad strokes. Since +Arnold K. released his magical heartbreaker the other day, I find I have thunk a great deal and read a great deal of RQ2 and Ars Magicka (thanks, O beardy ones) and other, less honorable systems. Much inspired, I suppose by catching Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell on Netflix this past month. That and lower back injury is keeping me from participating in gaming but much focused on the aethereal realms between my ears. It seems to me that DCC gives much in the way of the randomness of magic, but less in the way of the Mastery of it, aside from the way a higher-level PC may game it some

1) Vancian Magic, wherein you are limited by your intellect in the number of spell levels you may 'contain' at any time (6 plus your Intelligence bonus at any time, say?). These are lost upon casting, since each version is a different magical concept or critter in your head/soul/whatever
2) you may own and select from any number of spells, contained in your Grimoire(s), which can be stolen from you/lost/destroyed- a disaster and therefore make ye a lab/stronghold and hire thugs and grow guards in your lab, or make deals with things
3) you may develop your own versions of DCC spells after mastery of the original - this increases DCs, obviously (duh!)

4) there's pacts with things; you can bind fay/demons/spirits/elementals/FF style-Mana. Calling upon these require spellburn of high quantity, or else sacrifice of victims/treasure. As many pacts as Intelligence points, let us propose? And each represents an actual drain on your (choose 1) Intelligence, Luck, Personality? Permanent while in effect, let us propose. That is, the drain affects you as long as you wish to keep the bond in force. These kinds of loses only heal when the being is released, and some particularly bad ones cause permanent damage

5) alchemical formulae (requiring a lab and spending of loot).

6) Runes a la Runequest from the days of yore - so magicians can be rune-binders, also. You would be advised to check for Death Runes affixed to doors since this was a very common trap in RQ
7) Wizards have access to spells outside of the DCC lists - these work just as described for Crawl! magazine's OSR spells system i.e. the casting roll is 10 plus 2 times the spell's level. I am inclined to raise the corruption range for these to be equal to the spell's level, also
8) you start with whichever spells you wish, with the restriction being 3+your Int bonus in LEVELS, not spells. that missing 1 spell is Read Magic, so you can acquire new spells later and often
9) the Spell Duel system needs some tweaking - I think I posted to a version on my blog a couple of years ago
10) affinities a la +Gavin Norman 's excellent Theorems and Thaumaturgy for Labyrinth Lord (can't be bothered to look for link grumble grumble you will do as your heart suggests)
11) Gorgonmilk's +Greg Gorgonmilk excellent Vancian Magic Supplement - alas, it hath Vanished! Perhaps you may supplicate thyself to him for a link to a thing he has on Lulu but be warned for Gorgons have bitter milk and it stiffens the joints
12) All spells must have mercurials - none of this BS 'no result' result. I would allow the Purple Planet mercurials, your own themed mercurials, whatever. Smack a 're-roll' or 'roll on such and such table' right where that 'no mercurial effect' result is
13) I have this 'Dealing with Demons' document compiled from White Dwarves of Long Ago but you can't have it at the moment since I never give magic unless the price is terrible and far outweighs the benefit, and this one is bad news. PM me for a special one-time offer. Include your True Name, and the True Name of your romantic partner, childrens' true names optional
14) Essentially, I want all DCC Wizards to be time bombs of Chaos and awfulness, unless they take a pedestrian and predictable Lawful/Neutral path in which case they are boring and not as much fun. No such thing as a vanilla wizard. You ought to aim at specialising/theming between your funnel and your appearance on the scene as a Wiz 1, (note Specialization is Level 2 in DCC!) and so choose your list from available spells on hand in your real world and you are responsible for the rules and we will adjudicate
15) let's assume that OSR spells are on some logarithmic standard so that a AD&D Wish is a level 5 or maybe even 7 for DCC wizards. This assumes that all OSR authors have done their homework in estimating the level of their spells! heh heh heh)
16) Maze Rats makes for some amazing random spells. Amazeballs. Find it.
17) Ars Magicka has the thing divided up into effects. Maybe each effect/rune/circle stacked onto your spell to describe its effects makes a exponential increase in the DC to cast the spell - So Prismatic Spray of Ibn Al Urad (1d4 damage x Destroy x Body = 2x2x2 for a DC of 8). Something like that would probably suffice. Don't forget the mercurial!
18) As many Patrons as you like, but be reminded that Patrons exact a heavy toll for help. That's the point. I am not often as stringent about this as I should.
19) This magic system assumes strict records of time are kept, since Spellburn will be a serious problem to contend with.
20) every really dangerous spell (to others) ought to have dangers to one's self. Drawbacks encouraged - Ghastly Affair does this well.
21) I think I have recommended the supplement for LL called uh, Realms of, uh, shit Realms of Crawling Chaos by +Dan Proctor and +Michael Curtis almost since the inception of this blog. Everyone's hands quiver when Detect Magic is cast, not in anticipation but in trepidation.
21) reroll twice, apply results, discard 'No Results' results and roll again.
22) needs MOAR Alchemy

Friday, August 12, 2016

Psionics Supplement Mini-Review plus Yuan Ti for DCC/MCC

So - picked up this thing by +Reid San Filippo (esteemed author of Crawling Under a Broken Moon).

It's called Mind Games. It's a supplement for DCC that shores up one place where I find that DCC doesn't scratch my 1st Ed. AD&D itch better than the original, namely the Psionics. It's funny now that I am older I notice that many, many monsters in the MM1&2 and FF have psionic abilities listed in the stat chunk. I never paid much attention to them, mostly because I think Psionics were frowned upon when I were a lad as an unnecessary, optional option that most people I played with did not opt. When you think about it, Psionics-empowered PCs ought to have been, like Paladins, rare as hen's teeth, given the dwindling, vanishingly unlikely statistics involved necessary to play one if you do (as Crom intends) 3d6 straight down the line. But hey, plenty of folks let their hair loose and upped it some, which I don't think I ever saw.

What Reid has done (and +Claytonian JP hinted at in The Wizardarium) is attached a nicely foreign and exotic system onto the DCC core rules, with very little in the way of changes to the base mechanics, in order to give you that weird flavor of yore back. The thing is chock full of cool stuff, and the art and layout are nicely done. (I hear there was a kerfuffle with print versions but I think it's fixed at the time of this writing). There are 20-something psionic powers of varying dangerousness, a new class, plenty of psionic items (watch for Living Crystal weapons in my campaigns in the near future), and a couple of really terrific monsters. The Braingineers are like daleks, crossed with spiders, and so they're probably going to fall into my own games, soon.

Mindgames is just what I needed at this point, since I am thinking of siccing some ancient, slithery evil upon some friends at TridentCon, replete with Mind Blasts and Ego Whips and Polymorphing Demon Venom. David "Zeb" Cook is scheduled to attend, and my mind was transported to the Ancient Times when I fussed and fretted about snake cults in a city in the jungles of... I don't recall, was it Chult? Before Chult was a place? I don't know. Suffice it to say that The Dwellers of The Forbidden City charged my young brain with all kinds of images that laid dormant in there until I first view'd a version of King Kong (pretty sure it was Jessica Lange and a young The Dude). I recently had a vision in which I plopped the Forbidden City down with a Lost City erupting up from beneath, and +Kabuki Kaiser 's Kwantoom nearby, across the Pan Lung lake. Can you smell the lemongrass and strange spices? Olchak may give me a hard time about fetishizing the Far East, but it feels like something that hits me (granted I'm a white middle aged guy who was weaned on Saturday Afternoon TV and D&D) right in the tropes-lobe.

Okay, okay, back on track. Yuan-Ti. The demon-worshipping snake-men that everybody loves to hate, and doubly more so because the implicit body horror/snake phobia that gets you right in the amygdala from aeons dark and unremembered. On a glance at the stats below, they are bad ass and ought to send most low level parties fleeing and peeing and quaking and praying (6-9 HD with maybe a 0 armor class, plenty of spells, and psionics, also!) Good thing only 1-4 at a time, and I guess maybe accompanied by some cultists. I note that Deep Ones worry me more, since it's a metaphysical issue, but maybe later for that line of thought. The disciplines listed are B,D (Mind Thrust and Id Insinuation) and F,I,J (Mind Blank, Intellect Fortress, and Tower of Iron Will). With psionic 150 points, that's fairly bad ass, and most of these things will leave psychically undefended adventurers as synapse-shorted, howling idiots before the battle is even begun! Afterward, its disgusting worshippers will trundle you off to a dark cave and poison you into becoming a breeder for a new snake-thing, and (as Dragon #151 points out) if you fail and die during the process, they can neutralize poison you and try again...

So: Yuan-Ti need magic, lots of HD, and PSIONIC POWERS, and so where might we find some of those? Well, in Reid's new thing, that's where!

YUAN TI ABOMINATION: move 15', Init +5; Atk bite +5 (1d10), psionics, spell casting ; Action Die 3d24; AC 18; Hit Dice 8d10; Fort +7, Ref +7, Will +1

Psionic Attack Powers: (roughly analogous to Mind Thrust and Id Insinuation): Kinetic Burst, Affliction, Transmogrify Mind

Psionic Defenses: Hard to say.. Needs development as a power, or maybe not, but boosting the Telepathy Focus Die to 1d10 seems sufficient to me for the moment in order to defend in Duels/Subjugation Battles.

The other forms of Yuan-Ti have lesser Hit Dice and 1 fewer Attack Powers, but they all know 1d4 (suitably reptilian in their manifestation) Wizard or Cleric Spells chosen randomly, in addition to Neutralize Poison and Bind to/Invoke Patron. For PAtrons, use Set/SSeth or that snaky one from AD&BiB or maybe that one from Dragon 150 or the other canonical Yuan-Ti one from your old-fashioned system of choice.

More later - Be Well, Warm-Blooded, Manthings!

Post-Script for reference: These are the original 1e stats from Zeb Cook's Dwellers of the Forbidden City, to my knowledge the first appearance of this classic AD&D monster.

YUAN TI
FREQUENCY: Very Rare
NO. APPEARING: 1-4
ARMOR CLASS: 4/0
MOVE: 12” or 9”
HIT DICE: 6-9
% IN LAIR: 70%
TREASURE TYPE: C
NO. OF ATTACKS: 2
DAMAGE/ATTACK: See below
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Spells
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Nil
MAGIC RESISTANCE: 20%
INTELLIGENCE: Genius
ALIGNMENT: Chaotic evil
SIZE: M
PSIONIC ABILITY: 150
Attack/Defense Modes: B, D/F, I, J
LEVEL/X.P. VALUE:Variable

Living in tropical jungles, the yuan ti are a degenerate and corrupt race of creatures who were once human. All are devout demon worshippers and have a high regard for all kinds of reptiles. Through dark and unknown practices, their blood has become fouled, thus producing monstrosities, There are three types of yuan ti: purebloods, halfbreeds, and abominations.

Purebloods are the weakest of the yuan ti, having only 6 hit dice. They are human in appearance, except for some slight difference - scaly hands, a forked tongue, or a somewhat reptilian look about them. They are able to pass as humans 80% of the time. They normally handle affairs with the outside world, and may travel far and wide doing so.

Halfbreeds are highly distinctive. Some part of their body is that of a snake, while the rest is human. Appearance may be determined by the table below (rolling once or twice), or the DM may select the changes.

1 Snake head
2 Torso can bend and move like a snake’s
3 No legs, ends in a snake’s tail
4 Has snakes instead of arms
5 Body is covered by scales
6 Snake tail is growing from backside

If any combination seems impossible or unworkable, the result should be ignored. The DM may also create other results involving snakes and humans.

In attacks, a snake-headed halfbreed will bite for 1-10 points of damage, snake-headed arms will bite for 1-6 points, and a tail will constrict for 1-4 points. Otherwise the yuan ti will be able to handle weapons as a normal person. All snake parts will have an armor class of 0. Halfbreeds have 7-8 hit dice.

Abominations are the strongest of the yuan ti. All have 9 hit dice. In appearance they are often confused with nagas and other snake creatures. Abominations are either totally snake- Iike or only have some human feature (such as a head or arms). Their bite (unless human-headed) will do 1-10 points of damage.

All yuan ti with human legs may move 12” per turn. Those with snake bodies move 9” per turn and are able to coil around pillars and the like. Human headed yuan ti are able to cast the following spells once per day:

Cause Fear Darkness, 15’ radius
Snake charm
Sticks to snakes
Neutralize poison
Suggestion
Polymorph other

Yuan ti speak their own language. They may also speak with any snake or snake-like monster. Those with human heads also speak Chaotic and Common.

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Wish in One Hand, Tirade in the Other

DEAR ADVENTURE WRITING MOFOS:

In your modules/expansions/adventures, what I want is:

In the front matters, of variable length and however long it takes for you to get it out, set the scene, some verbose and stylized flavor text, fluff maybe, that I can read this and say: "Daniel wrote this on a Lovecraft tear and it is hilarious". Include satire. Ineffable wonder is terrific but not if its not gameable... Or if the concept is so high-concept that the game becomes an abstraction of whatthefucks, then maybe tone it down a couple notches but I am not the boss of you

I personally don't go for books-as-art/collectibles. Cleverness and usability, newness of thought in terms of gaming situations, that's key. I don't want it to be ugly, though. If we ought to emulate Z--'s approach in anything it's that he puts a great deal of effort into the things he does, and I admire him for that. Or at least, it appears he does. It's his livelihood and nobody ought to try to pull it out from underneath him, and I take ownership of my part. Don't make it like you generated half with some online website and filled in the rest. I can use a website for that myself and they are generally free. I'm paying FOR YOUR BRAINWAVES or maybe I will if you impress me.

In the entries, terseness. Just enough to oomph me. Clarity: I want to be able to know the theme of the area already. Put standout features in bold, treasure easily sussed, traps evident at a glance (or maybe just TRAP and I can cook it up kaboom). Stonehell by Michael Curtis and Gillespie's Barrowmaze are good examples where just enough is given in the general scheme of things. I should be able to look at the entry and in one fell swoop know what is about to happen

Random monsters that make sense somehow and introduce novelty, hilarity and dread and will interact with keyed static encounters. These should provide impetus against standing still and silly-dallying too long. Else, don't include them if you want the tone of your thing to be relaxed and merely exploratory. Shitty randos that are boring and just attack is a waste of ink. Moldvay reaction roll or something similar called for in situations of total ambiguity, BUT these things are wandering around for a good reason, right? Motive: these skeletons are lugging parcels for the Oppressive Douchebag Necromancer and would love to break up the monotony of post/biology workday and they resent his managerial style is better than "SKELETONS HIT LUCIENNE WITH SWORD FALL DOWN"

I want original monsters from your brain. Homages are okay. Radiation infused stirges are good, and they puke radiation into you because they are excited. A stirge is not okay to stat out because that's wasted ink. I'm pretty sure they are hard to hit, flimsy, and drink blood if they hit and latch on. I got that already. Staying on the ASE-as-example, the little robot dwarf guys who want to use you as parts, those are terrific. If it was all goblins, I wouldn't even have read the thing. I'd almost go without stats entirely since you could essentially let me kludge it into my own system. NO STATS!? A hush falls over the crowd and a looming sense of alienation toward the writer and off you guy, Dearie!

Awesome items for foolish players to let their PCs experiment with (I'm going to include experimentation rules in all my games maybe, I need to work out a system where I describe items more thoroughly instead of FUCK I GUESS ITS A LASER GUN). No more magic swords. I've seen every variation of magic sword ever and I get bored by swords and not engorged by swords if you take my meaning

One thing I love to see lately is permanent or long-lasting changes to PCs from items or interactions with the dungeon. Possibly death (there are more fun outcomes than death); possibly rocket-fired batwings. Something that changes a PC from "Eric the Warrior" to "Eric the CHROME SKYVIKING". I've killed, personally, a great number of Warriors and have no remorse, but a well-marbled pig invested with the semblance of a personality gets me upset when my mutant chomps his head off because the personality makes it taste better, you see. Mike Evans' Hubris has a good deal of this in the funnel so that the survivors are going to be unique and weird right at the start. One reason I dig DCC is that it allows me to purposefully encourage, with a minimum of work up front, a large group of memorable PCs that players get invested in. They ought to maneuver their shitty uninteresting ones into the line of fire, somehow. Many times these days, I think players get disappointed when their 0-levels bite it and it's natural, but if you do it enough you get less attached to individual PCs and more attached to the development of the survivors. Sometimes, you get invested in the pigs and goat-wives and Wargeese which says something to me.

My own policy is there ought to be chock full of hooks for the next thing in the back, and a number of setups for the thing in the front. Possibilities. Maps to other places. Let's do what the Old Ones did and link our own little Multiverses together by way of mutual reference. It's fantasy, and we all do it anyways, why not drop hints about other folks' works in there? Like a cult from Paul's book? Include it in your module and people will (without even knowing its happening) like it also, provided your thing makes a good time.

Don't name NPCs. That sucks. More later. THinking about Keep On the Borderlands, here.

Enough loot to make their eyes light up but not enough to break the economy. Or I don't know, your call.

I was in an "anti-table" mode for a while, but I have reconsidered. If it's thematic and provides some chaotropy, then hurrah (like, the reams of possibility in Kabuki Kaiser's stuff, versus ANOTHER LIST OF DOGS TO GROOM)

We're old enough and wise enough, now, to leave the graph paper in our youth. The world is not laid out, mostly, in uniform grids - sensible though it may be. I think Doug pulls this off nicely since his maps are arty and nicely represent scale and relationship without the tedium of 20 foot squares all the damn time.

Less scribbletits for the sake of scribbletitillation since I am somebody's dad and maybe I want to hand my daughter this book-analogue without my conscience nagging at me. I want her to be able to read it, comprehend it, and not lose SAN when she's 7 or 8. Call me uptight and I know demihuman and semihuman bodies are beautiful and natural etc etc but maybe

On that note, design some factions that have other motives besides SENSELESS GORE, and make it possible for pacifist approaches to have a possibility of winning the day. I really believe that games are much More Fun when we are all cracking up laughing because of interactions with the world and each other that are not merely rolls to see "DID I HIT AND KILL IT THIS TIME? IS IT KILLING ME?" And that one guy who has not yet, in 2016, learned to roll his attack and damage and Deed dice with one hand together all at once at the same time together for the sake of expediency and clarity and hold on what's that word I'm looking for let me get it from my bag I here it is what was the monster's armor class again? We should all respectfully model accurate and useful behaviors to people and hope they pick them up without a lecture, since tirades are good Sunday morning IMHO but not at game time; that's for laughing and laughing and maybe pissing your pants laughing from fear and terror and MAN THIS GAME IS TERRIFIC BUT I WISH JOEY WIULD HURRY IT UP BY GOD'S STONY YARBLES

Your mileage may vary of course but if you don't agree with my opinions, you're wrong and stupid, as this one or two guys I see on the Internet are prone to saying, and I will see to it personally that you reform or are ostracized. (A little satire for you but if you don't get it then count yourself lucky). This is about games, not maybe about selling games (to me it's a non-issue but for some a primary motivator which I think tangled up your approach) or our identity as a tribe and who the biggest dick swinging is but as I said choose for yourself

ON TO ELEVENSIES AND MORE CAFFEINATION THANKS FOR READING MOFOS

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Retinues and Scavvy Hordes (also Genestealers)

Been effing around in the basement. Had too much coffee the other day and felt an urge for finality that I now know will never ever come. I will be painting these little people probably until the time I pass away, in little batches of like 2 or 3 forever.

Here's some progress, if you're interested. My buddy is sending me my old genestealers (maybe 2nd edition?) and my original Scavvie gang that I never painted. I think he is going to keep the delaques and plastic orlocks/goliaths and terrain, but hey. It's cool.

Some of these figs have needed a little zazz on 'em for maybe 10 or 12 years.

Saturday, June 25, 2016

IRON WITHIN : IRON WITHOUT

It is clear that this sector's secessionist tendencies is due to a deeper underlying cause; some perverse machine at work under the surface. Under siege is all that is good and unites the Imperium of Man together, as if an Engine of Ill Will drives the machine unions to work against the Adeptii Arbites and the Astartes Soldier Brethren.

The cause must be investigated further and each face that comes to light will be voxcast.

NOTA BENE: This servant's eye units no longer work effectively and suitable cybernetic replacements are requisitioned from the Union storehouse. Please forward a surgical servitor and 2.5 drams of Kalma, as per the previously agreed terms. The hands shake and perhaps the next requisition forms will include requests for bionic brush holders and magnification elements

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Gangs of Metro City: BURNING ROAD

for +Jarrett Crader and +Claytonian JP and +Tony Tucker the rest of you people that make me want to create a new thing or play games or both

I call this genre DANGERBOOBIES;this is an example of Cosplay that doesn't maybe read the fluff

i GET A BIT CUNTY ABOUT OTHER PEOPLES' SUCCESS and also when I'm drunk i'm prone to drink and leave the caps lock on and make wild inadvisable boasts like HEY THIS MOVIE I WATCH WHILE IM WAITING FOR ZAKS NEW BOOK TO ARRIVE IS AWESOME AND IT COULD INSPIRE A GAME. You may have heard about my irritating and time-consuming project to turn my awesome Space Dungeon campaign on G+ into a 2D fighting game or maybe not, fuck it, i'll provide a link so you can catch up... Go ahead. No seriously, I'll wait.

Ok, all done? I know! It's a great idea to me, also! This post is only tangentially related, but since it's my blog, fuck it, you'll have to bear with me before you get to CONTENT because INSPIRATION etc etc blah blah

the objections to the character are deep and confusing

So anyway, one of the things about Space Dungeon: IN THE MAZE OF THE CYBERLICH is that it's a 2d fighting game all about poor human schmucks and alien schmucks and robot schmucks against the Terrible Horribly Combo-Laden Powers of Evil with Awesome Hypers and so, like in my RPGs generally it's not about the PCs having a chance of winning I mean come on let's be serious this is totally power tripping, here, but it's like every once in a while your schmuck will win a round or score a terrific combo and you'll feel elated for a second and TAKE THAT MOTHERFUCKER and it's a lot like Call of Cthulhu without all that messy fucking around with Sanity scores. I get plenty of Insanity at work, thanks, and sometimes I just want to beat some shit up with my body instead of my GOODWILL and POSITIVE ESTEEM

and so when I was lining up the Good Guys roster for this thing, I kept thinking about Cody and Guy and Haggar from Final Fight. If you do not recall, O Phillistine, then let me remind you of the goodness that was the late 80's/early 90's in which my meagre mind was formed, sack full of quarters and a face like it was on fire and somebody put it out with an ice pick. Double Dragon, Yie Ar Kung Fu, Karate Champ, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat. Yeah, yeah, I know! No wonder i'm always picking fights.

Henceforth all game maps will be drawn this way by decree

Anyways, the Final Fight guys didn't make it into my heartbreaker SD2d game, since they were too normal. But a byproduct of the search was that I found out that Final Fight was based on, nay a blatant copy of, Streets of Fire.

Where am I going with this?

Okay, here's the HACK-a-riffic wall of text you assed for

NOW FIGHT

In BURNING ROAD, there are no classes, only Warriors. Lesser people are there, obviously, but only Warriors come out to play. It's a Neo-Noir shitbag-stomping node-crawl, where you gotta get from this place to rescue that person/do that thing/get back with thugs on your tail. The world is an endless sprawl of wet roads, broken steam pipes, elevated trains, subways, and tenement housing. Littered in between the fearful citizens' fruit stands, diners, and watch repair shops, there are juke joints and maybe some newspaper offices. Everybody's come back from the war, and it feels like the 50's. There's pompadours and poodle skirts and it's not like diesel punk, I guess, but maybe if you want, fuck it I don't care. I guess it begs for lasers and big robots eventually. Everything happens at night but there's no reason why, that's just the way it is, see? Or else there could be aliens, I don't care it's your game.

You get a couple of Moves - these are Mighty Deeds, but you gotta name them up front. One per level, plus one. That makes two Moves at level 1. In all other ways, you're a standard DCC Warrior. There's small arms and you can choose those as special Lucky snowflake weapons if your group does that, or you can pick a baseball bat, butterfly knife, switchblade, broomhandle mauser. Something genre appropriate. For Moves, you get two Deed Dice and pick the best so it's pretty unlikely your Moves won't go off

You spend Luck like normal, but any time you get a breather, you get 1d3 Luck back and 1d6 HP. Any time you get a shot of Whiskey, also, or get romantic with a attractive member of your choice, or have a heart to heart about the past with a pal (even in the midst of combat)

Willem Dafoe and Lee Ving. Whowouldathunkit.

Any in-game dialog must be somewhat irritable and hostile and passive-aggressive, and use the slang of the 50's which I am not gonna look up for you, doll. If you don't use it, you lose that next combat's Moves dice, even if you're in the midst of combat, buttface. That's a Biff Tannen reference.

You can choose to be a Lone Wolf, a Band member, or a Ganger. When I was a drunk last night, there was some benefit to these but I lost it between then and my current state. Lone Wolfs can give away Moves dice or keep them; Band members improve dice chain on actions when with bandmates and coordinated; gangers get Thief Luck dice when with gangers of the same gang and can subtract from other gangs' rolls with those (trying to avoid too many old mechanics but keep same principles). If you're by yourself as a Band Guy or Ganger, go find a chum. Some Moral Advantage for Lawful, and Intimidation for Chaotic, and Neutral characters can pick

Gimmick gangs. That's cool.

There's something about colors. See: Dick Tracy, any modern noir film, Dark City. Streets of Fire actually has a lot of great examples of what must be gel lights on steam vents and it's beautifully shot and a nightmare of dialog but the writing is pretty spare and straightforward. I'll have to return to colors in scenes, or leave it out, I don't know. It's formulated in that compartment in my brain that had a lot of bourbon last night. Red for violence (improved dice for everybody in combat); blue/purple for the same in sneaking; green for fear/terror (reduction in die rolls, little shop of horrors)

neither Joan Jett nor Pat Benatar but somehow both and not as awesome

You only level up when you're travelling, or prepping for the adventure. All the action takes place in a night. Nodes generated by the narrative;

there;s more, but the world turn monochrome and this headache does not abate and I will have more links for you to consume

Meantime:

http://www.soronline.net/sor1_info.htm

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/3778/Haven-City-of-Violence-d20-Modern?it=1

+ramonthe3rd has a fun and simple urban crime rpg thing that I might steal liberally some of the ideas - Fire Elixir, but I can't figure out where I found it, maybe from Reddit or something

Speaking of Reddit, it's a nightmare, but it often has treasure in the deeps, for example in this thread

also: THIS because, I mean, what the hell

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Imperial News VOXcast Hive Primus

+++Coded for Sentient/Only;Piety:High+++

Refugees from Sectors SHONDRUAH and DORVASAL continue to move upward into the 2nd tiers and outward to Hives Secundus and Tertius. The stated reason is increased gang warfare activities, which the Arbites are instructed to allow, in the hopes that the villains will slaughter each other and spare the Helmawr and supporting houses the cost of ammunition and personnel. Why do Hive Officials not intervene directly to root out the source of these evils? Do not question, Heretic!, for The Emperor Himself directs the agents of Lord Helmawr...

In other unrelated news, cheap Spook and Spook-like analogs have flooded the markets of all Spires, causing addiction and overdose rates to soar, and production in the local Manufactora to plummet, jeopardizing quota and tithing levels. Shell casings are down 17% and Spook-agonist supplies dwindle. Warp creature incursions are [[[REDACTED]]]. The Conclave of the Sisters of Fiery Mercy Hospitallers have reported that promethium supply levels are running low, and flagellations and pogroms are increased in the 2nd tier fringes as lower-caste workers flee the depths.

In other unrelated news, quotas of applicants for the Black Ships program are surging to record heights! BEWARE THE MUTANT AND ALIEN, AND REPORT ALL PSYKERS TO OFFICIALS

+++end of line+++

(So listening to NPR on the drive into work I actually have to turn it off for a good portion of the drive so as to avoid hearing about this fucking guy Trump. But when I do listen it's about refugees! Refugees from warfare and gang violence , particularly in Central America where most refugees are provided amnesty and border agents are like MEH WHATEVER TIDE OF HUMAN TRAGEDY and I thought to myself Why don't they just send in troops down there and wipe those gangs the fuck off the maps?

And furthermore it's all about IEDs killing soldiers in Afghanistan and Opiod addiction and overdose and, really, I deal with these problems like at the ground level all day every day and it seems to me that the obvious solutions are only fit for hilarious satirical fictions and just pause to consider the sort of war zone that this country would become if suddenly all production of opioids suddenly ceased... It doesn't need to be a conspiracy - it's just that the negative effects are currently estimated to not yet outweigh the positives, whatever that means

So, let the gangs generate money and resources and then when they get to be a hassle then request a couple of squads of marines to just obliterate whatever an Inquisitor retinue points at, then spray a coat of paint down and let the refugees back in to the vacuum you just made.

Also, Spook! it's fun and every ganger should try it once or 5 times. Maybe some event floods cheap Spook derivatives to the market and everybody tries Psykers powers or limited versions and you can also save it for the inevitable bullish market later when supplies are low.

Please note: all this gaming activity generated by my news stories and work day and maybe a write-up forthcoming. I don't know. I have a lot of gluing and painting to do

P.S. I really loved the Enemies of the Inquisition list from the 4e Witchhunters book.

P.S. The Confrontation rules really put an interesting emphasis on Cherubs

P.S. BONUS LINK

http://leadplague.blogspot.com/2014/02/building-venators-journey-from.html?m=1

Monday, May 30, 2016

Street Fight in the SPACE DUNGEON

I was, and remain, a guy who imagines he can take anybody in a fight. I'm dumb in the way that all American guys are. I played Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, and Samurai Shodown AND I took about 6 months of karate 22 years ago.

SO - I'm a badass, at least up in my fantasy land in the old imagination zone between my ears. AT LEAST a Level 6/2 Fighter/Thief (not a Ninja, let's be serious). My allergies may get the better of me at this time EVERY GODDAM YEAR, but! No Shinobi will do so, unless of course I am eating Doritos and watching Star Trek. This one time I proposed to Anthony Poliseno while we were working this shitty movie theater job in like 1995 the ULTIMATE CUSTOMIZABLE FIGHTING game, and you could carry around little mini-CDs and whoop the ass of people and spend a sack of quarters and totally not make out with chicks that summer.

And, sad-dad nostalgia being what it is, every once in a while I think about this heartbreaker fighting game I could make if only I had a suite of confusing and cryptic but powerful software to help me, and OF COURSE, since this is the internest, that thing already exists, and who woulda thunk it is has a nicely developed community of wildly creative mashup junkies like you (since you are reading this and I make that assumption) and me.

So, I got my own thing going on and it's set to the same UHF Channel 17 as Space Dungeon in the old G+ community, that being a bunch of doofy rejekts in red shirt outfits and flailing around in hyperspace getting killed and looking for treasure and pissing their pants and dying in a hard vacuum. It looks like this, sort of:

And this:

The problem is, it's not real balanced and it's maybe way too ambitious and kinda wonky, and since the various MUGEN factions are not always agreeing on standards there are some terrific and broken characters that I included but they are buggy all to hell, and of course the engine is terrific, AND FREE, but it doesn't exactly do what you want unless you know how it works and can coax it.

It's like some Melnibonean daemon, except it won't take your soul as far as I know, but I sure do think about it a great deal. I find that I am thinking about Streets of Fire based versions of this in which Tom Cody fights that dragon up there, and of course I want most of the characters to be these shitty thugs that beat you up when you play those other games, and they have absolutely no chance to beat up, physically, the ESSENCE OF EVIL, I mean let's be serious, and I mean, that reflects somewhat on my DM style but I was exposed to Call of Cthulhu as a wee child, sorry, meng.

Anyways, I'll let you know how it goes. Here's the stupid and fun roster:

As you can see it's all about under-powered slobs against the hideous forces of evil, and while it's crippled and broken and awful, I am learning a great deal about the whole language and guidelines of it and that's the only reason I get engaged with stuff these days, is to figure it out. You wouldn't believe how customizable the engine is and how much raw content is available.

p.s. it's difficult to find pictures of '90's culture, like that arcade in International Mall in Miami where I finally despaired and gave up on the first SF2 games and Mortal Kombat and settled in to Time Killers and Samurai Shodown series...

Saturday, May 28, 2016

The Voxelcube Masters of Space Dungeon

The Ancient Race of Warani

Stargazing masters of matter Voxelization technology, the Warani turned the customization of the material world into a game of building blocks

Standing 7 to 9 feet high, the Warani are warlike and aggressive in gathering Voxelblocks to build machines to convert themselves to energy and so escape the confines of the Demiurge plane. They have 3 multi-hinged arms; the symmetrical distribution varies but those with 2 arms sinister tend to become powerful wizards and the others are usually warriors and workers. Almost all the Warani converted to zeta-waves aeons ago. The scant few who remain were driven mad by lust for materiality and these reject honor and impermanence entirely. The awful Warani Ghast Transmuters interred in Nebulmor hate all life jealously, and guard their vast treasures with vitriol and avarice, and also they wield terrible magic and psionics the way earth children play at digging virtual mines

There is much to be learned from their magic; scattered around their lairs , inscribed upon datacubes in long-forgotten trinary codes are powerful summonings, conjurings, and transmutations.

"Lord Meatpile" was a Warani diplomat who rejected the notions of his people and opted to sustain his mortal form well beyond its natural span by using various methane distillations and hyper-jewel-laced linen strips. He gives off a foul odor that discombobulates lesser beings. He has only awoken when the Mongrelmech refugees violated his crypt and so when the party next meets him his full strength will be apparent. His true name is scattered throughout the crypt in 37 syllables inscribed on voxel cubes that float randomly on æther drifts in the complex; one could conceivably piece them together but if it were done randomly it would take many many human lifetimes

He has done this himself 6 times but he often forgets and so may undertake it again soon

His 3 arms and legs are immensely powerful and his intellect is fogged by undeath (at the moment) but he remains formidable and cunning nonetheless

Saturday, May 21, 2016

My Former PC's Death was a Blessing

He didn't make sense anymore

Too many feats

Low SAN

Arrow to the knee

Voluntary corruption

3 different patrons bonded at low level

I'm glad he's dead and I feel nothing. Years of play and no emotional connection whatsoever

I'm glad he died.

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Crafthammer .0000004K

Enlist the children to do the Emperor's Work, and let their hearts grow light with tedium.

the Squats and Ogryn and BEASTMEN have put their hands to the movement of stone for His approval. Rejoice in our Abhuman Brethren But Abhor The Mutant and The Witch

CHILDREN ARE A BLESSING

Friday, April 15, 2016

The (Previously Untold and Spoilery) Story of Halthrag Keep

I wrote this some time ago as a way to keep the solo gamebook's rudimentary plot somewhat meaningful and sensible. I point out that it was written before the glowing green stones of the Purple Planet were in my mind; must have been some in-community synchronicity happening or something. I give it to you now, all word dumped and vomited, since I found it in my hard drive. I had written it to include in a standard DCC-playable multiplayer module, but if you're reading this, and you've read that, then you may have surmised something quite like it already. The next project calls, and I do not believe I will return to this forlorn place anytime soon, and so here it is for a few minutes' diversion. It's how I mix scifi and fantasy tropes into a thing that is more fun, and since DCC is permissive this way that's why I like it. This may represent the most cohesive world building I ever did and you get a glimpse here of Thrend, which has always hung there for exploring behind my eyeballs just in front of my imagination zone.

SPOILERS BELOW - THIS MAY ALTER YOUR EXPERIENCE OF MY GAMEBOOK IF YOU READ ANY FURTHER

A few hundred years ago, a pair of wizards fought a ceaseless series of battles over honor, or spellbooks, or the musty inner workings of the Mage’s Guild Ball. A minor offense was given and for this legions of men and women and hosts of man-like creatures died and were forgotten. Halthrag was one, a petty a vainglorious servant of Sezrekan whose reach often exceeded his grasp. During the last great battle between these blustering sorcerers (the other Wizard’s name and story are now long forgotten), the lesser known of them had nearly won all – he had not only marshaled legions of lizardmen and uruks, but had won over trow and a towering Cyclops to his cause, Avrogamt by name. This nigh-unstoppable monster had decimated the Threndian kingdom from North to South with his great stone and pyronite club before he marched upon Halthrag’s Keep. Stalwart though they were, Halthrag’s guardsmen were losing quite badly and were nearly beaten already when a flock of barrow harpies crashed into the wizard’s tower, splitting it wide and delivering the astral form of Halthrag’s nemesis by way of a flickering obsidian orb.

All at once, Halthrag was killed and his soul sent into the inky blackness of the Forbidden Zone, Avrogamt laid waste to the guard, and the captain of the guard Malkenruth despaired. Knowing that they would all soon perish without supernatural aid (which they no longer possessed now that their lord was gone), Malkenruth beseeched the golden idol that the men and women of the guard worshipped from their distant homeland. Unexpectedly, his prayer was heard. The idol’s master – a powerful Old One in its own right – diverted a passing cargo spaceship with telluric and magnetic forces, crashing the thing in a fiery blue streak that rocked the whole Peninsula of K.

The immediate result was that the top of the High Tower that contained the body of Halthrag and his gloating and astrally-traveling nemesis was obliterated. A vorpally-polarized hole opened in reality that cracked the obsidian orb and Halthrag’s enemy fled to the ethereal, now disconnected and untethered from his body. Coincidentally, Avrogamt was knocked to his knees and quickly dispatched by the remaining human guardsmen. The lizardkind and uruk troops of Halthrag’s enemy were blinded, shaken, and broken. Malkenruth and his brethren let out a great cry! The tide was turned! But their victory was shallow and short-lived, for the cargo of the small ship that destroyed the tower was scattered about the keep and the surrounding lands. Malkenruth and his peers sickened immediately, and the great swaths of forest around the keep blanched and grew surly. The river that flowed beneath the keep swallowed a great deal of the twinkling poison from debris that littered the cliffside, and the story tainted the folklore of the Threndian people for generations. All children were taught to avoid the glittering blue rocks that sometimes turned up in spadefuls of dirt or at the bottoms of squig-holes.

A millennia, an aeon, an age later. Halthrag Keep lies nearby to the lantern-jawed minor city of Marbourg. The blasted forests and fields nearby have mostly recovered and farmlands rarely yield sickened crops or mutated livestock. Some curious apprentice sorcerer takes it upon herself to enter into the long-avoided keep of the dead wizard Halthrag, taking with her a malicious imp named Spellvexit – her familiar spirit. He is her companion but lusts after her soul, and he smiles and plots against her. Inadvertently, she awakens the pilot of the diverted craft who (until now) has lain dormant in the wreckage of its otherworldly ship in a hibernation capsule at the bottom of a crater in the eastern yard of the keep. Her body is annihilated and the pilot sets out to return to the heavens to complete its original mission, the details of which are not important. But it needs the glittering, glowing blue rocks that tumbled all over the Keep and the surrounding countryside to power its gravitic reactors in order to escape Aereth’s atmosphere. So it sets the life support systems of the ship and the flying quad-rotor drones inside to find the glowing blue Space Rocks it needs. The drones and the pilot can sense the life forces that ebb and flow around the keep, and more powerful life forces are usually set upon immediately and turned into servitors to collect the fuel and bits of metal the pilot needs to repair the ship and embark. It can sense Marbourg, but the limited range of the drones and the state of the corpses in the keep limit the range of its operations. Further, the Xenon-poor atmosphere of Aereth saps the pilot of strength, even though Aereth’s gravity is somewhat less than that of its home planetoid.

Coincidentally, the Arm of Vendel Re’Yune – disembodied sorcerer – has settled upon the High Tower of Halthrag’s Keep in a dimensionally parallel (but proximate) causality. At night, at this time of year, the resounding temporal echo of the blast that destroyed the obsidian sphere nearby to the portal to the Forbidden Zone allows Vendel Re’Yune to manifest in an extra-dimensional space where the High Tower once existed. He senses that the technology the spacecraft pilot uses could unlock him from his inter-reality torture. In dreams, he has contacted the repugnant leader of a troop of were-creature bandits that stalk this area – the Jackals – and implanted the need to find the glowing blue rocks within and around the keep. Re’Yune hopes to use the rocks as leverage to bargain for technological aid from the pilot, or to somehow overpower it and bend its craft to his will. It may be that the gravitic reactors can reverse the molecular and quantum entanglement that keeps him alive and entombed. The drones of the pilot sense their intrusions and do everything they can to turn the Jackals back, including animating corpses to attack the bandits when possible and striking them with ion beams as a last resort.

The pilot merely wants to return to space, and has no understanding of the primitive morality or motivations that guides the carbon-based life on Aereth.

Further, unknown to either faction, a vicious Manticore has taken up residence within the dungeon of the Eastern Gatehouse; a tunnel into the north cliff face opened up after the spacecraft was dug out by the reanimated corpses the pilot roused. The Manticore is ill and reeling from an encounter with a sorcerer to the south (near Helleborine), one who opened up the heavens and blasted the area he and his mate hunted with a manifestation of Yog Sothoth. His crude band of hobgoblin followers were liquefied, and his mate was rent into a whiff of plasma. He is shaken and weakened, and hibernates without being detected by the pilot’s drones. If awakened from his slumber he will kill every human within miles and then move on to Marbourg. No great matter to the pilot (or Vendel Re’Yune) but the hapless citizens of Marbourg would probably suffer high numbers of casualties.

Even further, the cult of Malkenruth’s ancestors has recently sent missionaries into this area who have been led to the keep by dreams and portents. They seek out the Golden Idol of the Shining God but are somehow always driven off or killed when they do gain surreptitious entry into the keep - usually from the difficult northeastern scramble over the rubble of the destroyed outer wall there.

Lastly, the weird extradimensional energies that course through the area owing to its history and ley-line placement naturally mean that all sorts of strange demiplanar openings wink open and closed in the keep on a regular basis. Beings from other planes and versions of Aereth pop in and out without understanding why they come and go, and the place is a favorite of fey-beings and Elves. The King of Elfland and his allies have come to loose agreements with Sezrekan, Hecate, and other patron entities that the place is formally off limits, but this does not keep stray moon elf and dvergar tribes from wandering through and taking captives for sale or trade.

Sadly, after recovering from a spate of Zombie Fever, the citizens of Marbourg have left behind a brutal winter and are mostly unaware that travelers to and fro are at high risk for being brutalized by the Jackal gang, the pilot’s drones and zombies, elvish marauders, and other stray extradimensional wanderers that are generally confused and anxious to return to their nearest parallel universes of origin.