Adventure Location: Monta Sempiterna

For use with Godbound, from Sine Nomine Publishing 

Clues

• A flying barge manned by golden automata takes captives from a settlement
• Worshippers pray for deliverance from the “Golden Harvest”

Overview

• The rootless mountain called Monta Sempiterna floats through the skies above the created world, speckled with crumbling purple edifices
• Gold-and-marble golems plague the lands below, dragging prisoners back to their flying barge
• These two things are connected: a Parasite God calling himself Heavenking rules Monta Sempiterna, and he demands worshippers
• Captives are indoctrinated by the leech-deity’s high priest (his brother from when he was a mortal)
• They are forced to worship before Heavenking’s throne until they die of exhaustion

Inhabitants

• Heavenking

• “The Purple Emperor, the Rightful Ruler of the Universe, the Overgod”
• Looks like Xerxes from 300
• Parasite God, bound to the Word of Command
• Once a mortal wizard who bound the Word by tampering with the celestial engine in Starheart Palace
• Bound to the rootless mountain; cannot leave
• HD25, AC 3, 6+ Sv., +10 2x1d12 straight
• 9/10 Effort. Thrall-Making Shout, Guards! Seize Him!  (Command)
• Acts THRICE per round

• Yusof

• High Priest of Heavenking
• Looks like Egyptian priest from Fifth Element
• Brother of the mortal who became the leech-god
• Both were Theurges exploring the rootless mountain
• Knows Heavenking’s given name (Fareed)
• Bound by Soldier’s Faithful Heart (Command), but yearns for freedom (his and his brother’s)
• HD4, AC 7, 13+ Sv., 1d6
• Knows the Theurgy Legion of Marching Clay
• Will share it with gratitude if his brother can be freed
• Might agree sadly if Heavenking is slain

• Flea

• Clay golem, leader of the golden legion
• Weaker than those it commands, but clay form allows for individuality
• Intelligent but naïve
• HD2, AC 5, 14+ Sv., 1d8 (spear)

Locations

• Golden Legion Garrisons

• Houses a Vast Mob of automata created through Legion of Marching Clay
• Marble bodies veined with purple; golden armor
• Cannot be harmed by nonmagical weapons
• HD42 (2 each), AC 5, 14+ Sv., 3x1d8 (spear)
• Overwhelm (Hardiness vs. 1d8, one target only)

• Temple-Prison

• Flying barge docks here
• It is the artifact God-King’s Resplendent Barge (Godbound p. 179) piloted by Flea
• Flea is unaware of the command chair’s mind-weakening enchantment
• Yusof wrangles his unwilling flock with the help of Golden Legionnaires
• Small Mob of automata, cannot be armed by nonmagical weapons
• HD11/14 (2 each), AC 5, 14+ Sv., 1d8 (spear)
• Overwhelm (Hardiness vs. 1d8, one target only)
• About three dozen captives receiving instruction at any given time
• Every day 2 or 3 are sent up the Ten Thousand Lavender Steps
• None ever return

• The Ten Thousand Lavender Steps

• Switchback up the mountain
• Made of polished soapstone
• Single Golden Legionnaires stand post at every turn

• Heavenking’s Palace

• Ring of ten worshippers do constant obeisance to the Parasite God
• Heavenking himself lounges in a chair of solid white stone with purple cushions
• Above the throne is a distortion in space
• Sealed Night Road leading to Starheart Palace
• Shattering the celestial engine makes Heavenking back into the mortal Fareed, but does not cure his addiction to worship

In Praise of Trophy Gold

Every so often you encounter a piece of art that fundamentally changes how you view the artistic medium it's a part of. This is distinct from simply great art; I'm talking about the stuff that blows the doors off your inner conception of the form--works that make you jump out of your chair and say, "You can do THAT? This was possible all along?"

The first time I remember feeling this electric shock was hearing the Allemande from Caroline Shaw's Partita for Eight Voices (give it a listen) in undergrad music history class. The past three years of my life had been spent immersed in the canon of western music; I thought I understood pretty well the range of what existed. Or at least, the range of what I enjoyed. There's plenty of wacky ugly sound out there, if that revs your engine.

But this! Eight human voices, pushing to the edges of what human biology can phonate. Tidal waves of perfectly tuned chords interspersed by visceral dissonances, spoken words, snarls, and more. I nearly wept in my little bucket chair with its built-in writing desk. Six minutes in that dim lecture hall are a core memory.

Most of all, I remember thinking, "My god, new music can still be beautiful."

Anyway, I got a hard copy of Trophy Gold a few months ago. My god.

Trophy is an interesting beast. The design traces itself back to the fiction-first, almost story-game tradition, but generalized to break out of that narrative straightjacket and provide an engine for collaborative storytelling in any bespoke adventure. 

Of the two familial lines (Trophy Dark and Trophy Gold) I've only played or read Gold, the younger child. Dark is obligate play-to-lose; your treasure-hunters are not coming back. 

Trophy Gold, on the other hand, is something of a hybrid. Characters always skirt the edge of doom. There's no "advancement," per se; completing one adventure ("incursion") doesn't make you more likely to survive the next one (quite the opposite, usually). 

But you can work towards a goal: collecting 50 Gold and accomplishing your Drive. It's a tantalizing promise, like paying off your debt at the company store and finally being free to leave the mines.

I've never played a game anything like this before. The only story game I've ever touched is Nightling Bug's Wickedness; other than that, I'm a child of the dragon game and its many mutant cousins. Maybe that makes me a poor judge of a work so outside my wheelhouse.

But maybe not. The folks behind Trophy Gold describe it as a new-school engine to run old-school dungeon crawls. In that way, Gold bridges the gap between my experience and the wonderful world of collaborative, forge-the-narrative RPGs which until now have been a mystery to me. The "doors blown off" moment is a function of the one who experiences it, not just the work of art that triggers the revelation.

What is Trophy Gold, anyway? 

Let's answer a question with a question: what's the largest stand-alone unit of fiction in a traditional RPG? There are lots of answers you could give, but I think "the dungeon" is a good one. Dungeons are self-contained: you go in, you do stuff, you come out (or don't). At a higher level, a hexcrawl map mostly tracks where adventure locations are. The central example of an adventure location? The dungeon.

Dungeons, in turn are broken into rooms. This is a diegetic division; that is, the in-fiction characters are experiencing the same hierarchical breakdown as the players. The doorway boundary between physical dungeon rooms corresponds to the textual boundary between area descriptions.

Trophy does it differently. A Trophy Gold incursion is divided into "Sets," each of which might be as small as a dungeon room or as large as an entire forest. This is a thematic rather than physical division; the incursion is the dungeon-equivalent and the set is the room-equivalent, but bounded by conceptual breaks rather than physical walls.

Actually, this kind of slicing shouldn't be unfamiliar to dungeon-crawl GMs. Many dungeons have their rooms grouped into "the ones with bugbears," "the ones with orcs," "the ones with undead," etc. Trophy just takes that kind of higher-level association, and makes it the canonical subunit in the text.

Crucially, Trophy also makes the players aware that this shift in viewpoint has occurred. Player/character knowledge separation is fairly key in Trophy, and it's another step away from the old-school worldview. Each Set has an explicit goal, and the players are informed of it as soon as they enter. How often have I agonized over the party overlooking the (seemingly) obvious interaction hook in a room? I could have just been telling them!

Set goals can get crazy explicit in practice. A band of treasure-hunters might enter a field littered with corpses, and the GM tell them, "this set is called 'Magegrave.' The set goal is 'Break Kubnezzin's final spell.'" Immediately the players know a whole slew of things their characters don't:

• There's somebody named Kubnezzin
• He can cast spells
• Given the word 'final' and the set name, Kubnezzin's probably dead
• But one of his spells is still active

It could be fun, in traditional play, to figure all this out through exploration and interaction with the environment. But one of the major strengths of Trophy is that it boils down the necessary material to the bare essentials. If you wanted to convey the above bullets through pure setting description, you'd need to litter the area with clues, most of which the players would probably never interact with. Trophy jumps straight to the meat.

Actually, that gets at a deeper point. The traditional model is that physical facts about the fictional world inform the overarching concepts, themes, and truth of the setting. Trophy's incursions and Sets reverse that: overarching concepts, themes, and truth inform physical facts about the fictional world.

There's a stereotype that the rules in less traditional RPGs are somehow looser and weaker, that because the players shape the story more they're by necessity less bound by the system. This is the cause of a lot of the poo-pooing of newer games by the longbeards of the scene, as if some players aren't tough enough to handle a strict and unforgiving ruleset.

I think this view is completely backwards. At least in the case of Trophy Gold, the rules are often far less flexible than in your average dungeon crawler. If a roll of the dice says that you take consequences, there's no arguing for a way out. The fiction bends to the rules. 

About those dice. There are only three kinds of roll in Trophy Gold, and each of them is genius. As with the breakdown of incursions into Sets, the game has sliced through dungeon-crawling play at the joints and carved out the three things that treasure-hunters are always up to:

1. Poking around and looking for interesting things (the Hunt roll)
2. Doing dangerous stuff to accomplish their goals (the Risk roll)
3. Fighting terrible foes (the Combat roll)

I mean, that's pretty much dungeon-crawling in a nutshell, right? Anything that has a success and failure state--that is, anything that would require a roll of the dice in a traditional game--can readily be plopped into one of those three buckets. I've occasionally seen inexperienced Trophy GMs make a roll outside the triptych, and the game is almost always the worse for it.

I won't belabor how the various rolls actually work. Buy the game! Suffice it to say, the mechanics ensure that players get meaningful choices by default, and when they suffer consequences it's always because of those choices. How many RPGs can say the same?

Making the leap from dragon game successors to Trophy is no mean feat. I credit my success to the excellent how-to videos by Trophy publisher Jason Cordova, whose Sixth Ring podcast is another great resource. It's undeniable that playing a game like this requires a new mindset. It's an entirely different frame around role-playing; a different angle from which to examine this hobby of ours.

My reaction: "You can do THAT? This was possible all along?"

-V

Naval Combat

(previously: Simple Seafaring)

Handling ocean travel like an overland pointcrawl is all well and good for most use cases. When you're just going from island A to island B, you can ignore the gritty details and boil the experience down to 1) do we get to where we're headed? 2) how long does it take? 3) do we have to fight any monsters?

What's a pirate-themed game, though, without the occasional high-seas battle? Not much point to having all these warships lying around if we never have them blast each other to splinters with ranks of cannon fire. 

With that in mind:

HERE ARE SOME NAVAL COMBAT RULES

Game in progress using this system

Thoughts

This ruleset is intended for use with Kevin Crawford's Godbound; terms such as "straight" damage and "mobs" are drawn from that book.

The eagle-eyed may notice that there are no rules for wind and weather, changing speed from round to round, or any number of other subtleties to which veteran naval warfare gamers may have become accustomed. That's by design; this isn't a wargame. It's a framework to be interpreted by a GM, hopefully with the best interests of the whole table at heart. 

My goal here was to balance simplicity with depth (isn't that always the goal?). A classic tactic like "crossing the T" works as expected if you know your naval history, without becoming a distraction from the Role-Playing part of the RPG experience. 

If you're tempted to think these rules are TOO simple, be aware that a playtest battle with only one PC ship tool almost three hours. On the other hand, if that's really your cup of tea, feel free to tack on more complexity! 

-V

The Adventurer as Insect

I recently got my hands on the Quickstart edition of the upcoming Beetle Knight RPG. The mechanics seem interesting enough at first glance, but what captivated me was the high concept: the adventurer as insect.

The idea of casting the PCs as a small animal to emphasize their vulnerable place in a dangerous world is not new, of course (Mausritter being perhaps the most prominent example of the technique). Insects, however, are different from small mammals in one important way: they're far more powerful for their size.

It bears repeating: proportionally, insects are Marvel superheroes. They can fall from great heights or be struck with enormous force, then get up and casually lift many times their body weight. In other words, they have all the qualities of adventurers.

Some in the TTRPG scene are wont to lament how far modern pinnacles of the genre (see 5e) have strayed from the gritty and lethal days of yore. Gone are the editions where a single blow from a goblin's rusty blade could fell the hardy fighter. At today's gaming table, you're more likely to see that fighter hurled through a wall by a dragon's wing buffet, bear the full brunt of its breath weapon, and charge right back into the fray. After a few levels, heroes handle like tanks.

Or, you know, like insects. I think this comparison is worth more than a cursory glance. Consider the difference between the things an ant can shrug off (falls, flicks) and those it can't (glue, sustained crushing force). What if we let that inform our design? Rather than just becoming increasingly impervious to their environment, our adventurers wax invulnerable along some axes while remaining very much mortal along others.

The Beetle Knight Kickstarter is coming soon, and I'll be interested to see whether they play up this aspect of insectoid nature. Either way, it's a treasure trove of ideas for us all.

-V

Tasks and Fuses

A while back I submitted three cards to Long Tail Games' Tiny Library: Modern Fantasy deck of MOSAIC-strict game fragments. One of them, HEXRING character creation, was selected for inclusion in the final deck!

This is one of the other two cards. Glory in my handmade clipart.

front and back; click to enlarge

Thoughts

Timekeeping is as old as RPGs. It hits at all scales, from opening a locked door while combat rages to researching an ancient ritual in a vast library of scrolls. How long until the vizier's troops break down the door? How long until the potion is fully brewed?

By the nature of the medium, the cards are pretty self-contained. Tasks have made it into THAUMOS, while fuses ended up on the cutting room floor. 

-V

The Drinkers of Light

The two sources of celestial power in Oth are light and fire. Light is of Alef; fire is of Tav. That much is broadly agreed on. The light of Alef fuels the web of life (and thus the web of magic) on the surface, flowing through plants to animals and eventually to thinking beings like the alefim, grimmot, and humans.

Some say that humans also contain the fire of Tav; this is controversial. Letys Ink-Eyes' thesis defense on the topic was famously interrupted when a Last Radiance terror cell firebombed the classroom. Their message of "if she loves fire, let her have it" was considered philosophically unsound, but pragmatically convincing.

Anyway, it's well-known that humans contain a sliver of Alef's light. What's less well known is that this light can be stolen.

They rise to positions of power. They draw all eyes when they enter a room. They are the subject of fascination, admiration, speculation. Victims come of their own volition, once the art is mastered.

Alefim call it "oluká," and many give the same label to its practitioners. When the right resonance is established in the weave of magic, the physical and metaphysical can be made to mingle. Celestial light, that abstract etheric concept, harmonizes with the material world. An oluká can then draw it out of their victim by consuming their bodily essence.

Eating flesh is possible, but rare. Oluká who take the ghoulish path rarely last long, as the hunger for light quickly becomes an addiction, and hiding serial cannibalism is difficult. Instead, the most common choice is the consumption of blood.

yum

(There are other reliable methods, from which spring the legends of succubi.)

Light so stolen can only be held for so long. When it inevitably drains away, the oluká is left ravenous for more. They will do anything to regain the feeling of transcendence it grants, to say nothing of the adulation and status to which they have become accustomed. 

They take more, more, more. Even those who are careful begin leaving a trail of bodies.

At best, they are hunted down and slain without anyone learning the reason for their predations. At worst, they begin teaching the secret to others, gathering apprentices to share the burden of collecting victims. These twisted cabals are often made up of the leader's former victims themselves, now bound to their teacher through ties of not-entirely-natural loyalty.

Some families of oluká persist for generations. They age only slowly, dying to violent internal struggle more often than time's arrow.

Brahim Phtali, called the merciful, is kept under lock and key by the glass archivists of Nabb. In exchange for a trickle of volunteer victims, he provides insight into historical arguments, lost lore he still recalls.

There are those in Nabb who question the balance of power in this relationship.

One might expect the alefim to revile this perversion of their lord's power, but they seem indifferent. Perhaps the degeneracies of an already-degenerate people hold no surprise for them. Or perhaps they are all too glad to see humanity devour itself from within.

Engaging Challenges for Godlike Characters

Challenging the Gods

They say the best Superman stories are the ones where the problem CAN'T be solved by Superman's powers. No amount of strength or speed can fix interpersonal drama or untangle a logical paradox. Or rather, Superman's abilities may play a key role in the ultimate solution, but they can't solve everything on their own. There's no "brute force" method. Writers for such high-powered superheroes face an eternal challenge: how to reliably put them in situations they can't just punch their way out of? 

GMs face a similar in games where players can reach godlike levels of power. I'm running a Godbound campaign right now, and a big part of the fun is that many challenges that would stymie your average RPG party are a walk in the park for a pantheon of demigods. Horde of demons? Two combat rounds; three at most. Angry monarch? A single Theurgy spell makes him your best friend, permanently. Societal ills? Invest some Influence or Dominion; repeat as needed.

This is fun in moderation, just like beating up a roomful of goblins as a level 10 character can be fun. But at a certain point, running roughshod over a world that can't push back loses its luster. After all, if we wanted PURE wish-fulfillment, we'd get rid of the the rules entirely and just re-write fictional reality.

DCs don't mean nothin' when you've got the Word of Might

The "Superman solution" of non-physical challenges isn't a silver bullet (to mix our metaphors) either. Taking Godbound as an example, plenty of divine gifts and miracles can sidestep the problems one would often throw at an invincible protagonist. Even large-scale trouble, city-scale dangers, don't reliably force clever decision-making.

What are some solutions?

1. This isn't a problem

(or, wish-fulfillment can be fun)

Maybe your players just want a sandbox to mess around in. That's fine! It can't all be OSR grittiness and getting skewered by a skeleton's spear. Some groups might never get tired of putting dragons in headlocks and kicking storm giants in the nuts.

If this describes your band of herculean misfits, read no further. Let them run wild across the campaign world to their hearts' content. What I've found, though, is that this kind of license grows stale over time. Maybe a long time! But eventually.

2. Juice up the baddies

(or, ogres now have 12HD)

Godbound itself is guilty of this sin to some degree. The section on adapting monster stats advises a Hit Die scale that's quite a bit higher than old-school equivalents, and goes so far as to say that a creature should have at least 10HD if you want it to pose a challenge for the a Godbound party. It's tempting, then, to let your expectations (dragons should be a deadly challenge!) inform the power level of the foes your party faces.

Resist! This failure mode is so, so common in video games; don't let it happen to you. I've never played Skyrim, but every time I read about how if you go back to low-level dungeons at high level, all the enemies have leveled up as well, I want to tear my hair out. 

If the party has the same probability of victory against an ogre that they would if you were playing B/X, then in what meaningful sense are they more powerful? If every time you get a +1 to hit, the monsters' AC improves by 1, you're treading water.

I actually do make exceptions on this point for mythical foes like dragons. Demigods vs. an ogre should be a one-sided beatdown; demigods vs. a wyrm of legend deserves an epic fight.

3. Zoom out

(or, nice empire you've got there)

Ah, domain-level play. The promised grail, so rarely reached. Unless you're a god! This is the recommended solution in Godbound--give your party vast lands to rule, besieged on all sides by dark empires and jealous rival demigods. 

I've said before that scale isn't a solution on its own, but that's not entirely true. The use of Influence and Dominion in Godbound is limited by the scope of the changes you're making: town-sized, city-sized, or kingdom-sized. 

Zooming out to the level of fantasy geopolitics also creates foes that can't just be killed: how do you handle a nation bent on your followers' destruction, when killing their leader just leads someone else to take up the scepter? Do you wipe them out? Is protecting your flock worth violence on that scale? Hah, ethical dilemma! 

4. Go cosmic

(or, punch god in the face)

In a sense, this is the right way to use solution #2. Instead of increasing the power level of your standard monstrous menagerie, let your party fight their way up the corporate ladder of enemies all the way to the top. Broke: orcs in an abandoned castle. Woke: bound demons in an abandoned flying wizard's tower. Bespoke: insane angels in an abandoned celestial dominion.

Of course, creating epic-level adventure locations is a challenge of its own. They've got to feel strange and wondrous, not just "this is a dungeon, but you can't use your divine power to teleport through the walls because they're made of special celestial concrete." My best shot at this so far is the Oubliette.

5. Incompatible goals

(or, what color do we paint the temple walls)

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Sometimes your high priest wants to make peace with a rival religion, while the grandmaster of your paladins wants to wipe them out. Maybe the heart of a celestial machine offers the key to ultimate power, but disrupting the machine's operation would devastate the mortal world. Ain't that just the way.

go watch Over the Garden Wall

The two incompatibles might both be good, they might both be bad, or there might just be a tradeoff. The "both bad" version is a staple of superhero movies, from the exploding ferry in The Dark Knight to the death of Lois Lane in the first Christopher Reeve Superman. 

But the "both good" scenario has its merits, too: imagine you plan to honor one of your followers as your greatest mortal champion, but two candidates both desperately want (or even need!) the glory.

One danger with this approach is that it risks making the characters' great power irrelevant. If I joined a campaign because I wanted to play a god of fire and death, I'm going to be pretty peeved if every session is spent debating the finer points of tithing for my cult. 

So make sure the party still has a chance to open up the throttle and let rip once in a while. Put something in their path they can crush without remorse.

Perhaps an ogre?

Thoughts

One of the most striking insights of the OSR, for me, is this: don't give out abilities that render core challenges moot. In dungeon crawling this means no light cantrip, no goodberries, and no bags of holding. It got me thinking about when a game, by design, elides the classic obstacles of an RPG.

My current Godbound campaign faces all the problems described above. At level 1, the pantheon was about as capable as high-level mortal heroes, but at level 3 they're carving through krakens like cake. All the solutions listed are tricks I've tried or traps I've fallen into. 

It's tough, but crucially the players seem to be having a great time.

That's the whole idea, right?

-V

Ghost Cults

Ghosts are usually a temporary annoyance.

The various religions of Oth are divided on the matter of the immortal soul. The Church of the Last Radiance teaches that Alef reclaims their light at the moment of death, and the deceased returns to unity with the divine. Their itinerant preachers often add that souls tainted by evil are instead seized by Tav-who-is-below, dragged down to fire and pain. Church authorities discourage this heretical strain.

Ghosts complicate matters. When a person of particular power--magical, political, it doesn't seem to matter--dies, they may leave an echo of their spirit behind. Ghosts linger in the places they spent their lives, haunting those who cared the most for them. Their power over the living depends on the strength of their relationship. As those left behind move on, the ghosts fade.

On rare occasions, a ghost becomes part of the legend of a place. If everyone in a town knows that the old mill is haunted, that mental energy may be enough to anchor the ghost and prevent it from fading. Ghost hunting is a mostly psychological art, and exorcisms rely on convincing the community that the spirit has been banished (which then becomes true).

what a pain in the neck

Anyway, those aren't the sort of ghosts the Cults worship.

These days, there are two great Powers in the world. Alef: the Last Radiance, the Coin of the Morning, the Dayflame; and Tav: Chained Tav, Tav-Who-Is-Below, the Deep One. But it wasn't always so. 

Once there were five, before Alef and Tav defeated and slew the others, long before mortal life was first conceived. The three dead Powers are corpses now, lifeless balls of rock that can be seen in the night sky, reflecting Alef's divine light.

But oh, what ghosts they left behind.

Such is the strength of these remnants that they can be felt even across the unimaginable distance to the sites of their haunting (their celestial corpses, of course). The four seasons are defined by the waxing and waning of their relative influence:

• Yodar: Yod ascendant. Caution, wisdom, harvest.
• Sachar: Samech ascendant. Family, hunger, meditation.
• Tsadar: Tsadi ascendant. Change, ambition, love.
• Afar: Alef alone. Plenty, growth, travel.

The seasons tug on the spirit as much as they change the weather. Far more wars break out in Tsadar than in Yodar, while most construction happens in Afar despite the heat. The influence of the dead Powers is everywhere, but most folk--even foolish humans--know better than to speak with them.

The Ghost Cults are the exception. They spring up in cities, usually among those who consider themselves enlightened and erudite. Often they begin as "research organizations," groups of scientists and mages who think they can learn from the Powers, uncover secrets of the universe.

Once they start hearing the voices, though, the devolution is quick.

purely academic

You can tell a ghost cult's age by how much its members resemble their patron. Early-stage cultists of Samech are grim and reclusive, while by the end their teeth are stained red with human blood. Tsadi-cults begin with duels and orgies, and end in mass suicide.

For the dead Powers are mad, and their madness is infectious.

As patrons, the celestial remnants have little to offer. Their fires are long extinguished; they have no strength to share. The greatest asset of the ghost cults is their unity. At least at first, the members' common allegiance grants a supernatural feeling of community and camaraderie. It is this sensation that holds the cult together as its rituals become more extreme, and society at large begins to root it out. 

Because of their intellectual appeal, ghost cults often count powerful mages among their initiates. Zavesh the Spider-Lord infamously made worship of Yod the official religion of the Venomous Empire, and legend says that the seers of his inner circle were crafting a ritual to re-ignite Yod's inner fire when they were wiped from the map by a hurricane so powerful that it cracked bedrock.

Despite the dangers, it's rare to find a city of any consequence without some ghost cult activity. Although it's a rare occurrence for civilization to collapse entirely under their influence, the cults eat through the ranks of the aristocracy and intelligentsia, clashing in the shadows until they become too obvious to ignore. Then the horrors come to light, the membership is purged, and the city moves on. As long as there is hidden knowledge, some fool will seek it out.

For the voices do have secrets to tell.

Thoughts

Cults are an iconic feature of pulp fantasy. Contrary to what some have argued, I think there are plenty of good reasons for your average fantasy citizen to become a cultist. In a world of low social mobility and strict hierarchical society, cult membership is a "cheat code" to gaining respect and status. Anonymity and secrecy offer an escape from class-based identity, a chance to rise or fall on one's own merits. In that way, it serves much the same purpose as military service did in some time periods, but with less travel and (potentially) less danger.

The ghost cults are a different kind, though--fashionable among the upper crust rather than the hoi polloi. This isn't unlikely either; factions in the nobility are always looking for excuses to form alliances and consolidate their power-bases. It's just unfortunate for them that in this case the object of devotion eventually drives them stark raving mad.

From a fiction / gaming standpoint, the ghost cults are useful because they could have almost any goal or scheme. Kidnappings? Sure. Dark rituals? Absolutely. Vandalism? Oh boy, what a surprise when the trail of graffiti leads not to a gang of juveniles but a cabal of cannibalistic university professors. Heck, rip the cults out of Oth and put them in you own world. There's always someone who Looks Beyond.

-V

Southern Coasts Map Update

Back in May I posted a small hexcrawl called the Southern Coasts, a slice of a swords-and-sorcery setting inspired by the Black Company series. 

The map for that crawl was made in Hexkit using the default free tile assets; which, while gorgeous and gritty, aren't my own work. So I've now re-created that map myself, with hand-drawn tiles in my own inimitable style. Gritty... not so much. But it's mine.

Thoughts

The big reason for this redraw is that the stock "HK-Classic" tiles have a non-commercial use license. This crawl is part of THAUMOS, which eventually I plan to make available in full in exchange for... money, so an update was always in the cards. 

There's also the fact that I've made maps for almost all my campaign settings, and they all look something like this. It ain't a Veles game without pastel cartography. The ur-example of this phenomenon is my "Thaumocracy" setting; I ought to post that map sometime.

Happy Thanksgiving, and good crawling!

-V

Bravo Combat

A bravo fights with honor.

A bravo fights with panache.

A bravo lives to fight.

You have some number of six-sided Fight Dice (FD). So does your opponent. The more FD you have, the better of a fighter you are.

Your position, stance, and focus are represented by your Poise. If you have time to stretch and warm up before a combat, your Poise starts at 6. Otherwise, roll all your FD. The highest value is your initial Poise.

The combatant with the lowest Poise acts first.

Each round, choose to press, retreat, or strike.

• Press: get them off balance
• Roll some or all of your FD
• Can't roll more than your current Poise
• For each die that shows a value LOWER than or EQUAL to your maximum FD, your opponent's Poise decreases by 1
• Retreat: find more advantageous ground
• Roll all your FD
• If the highest value is greater than your current Poise, your Poise becomes that value
• If you roll a 6, you may immediately press
• Strike: make your move
• Roll one die
• If the result is HIGHER than your opponent's Poise, they lose one FD
• If not, your Poise decreases by 1

When a combatant loses their last FD, they are defeated. Their opponent decides whether to kill, knock out, or humiliate them.

Bravo Combat is MOSAIC-strict.

hi-ya!

Thoughts

One of my oldest Design Dreams is a combat system that CANNOT devolve into a stand-still slugfest. I want combatants jumping around, swinging from the chandelier, climbing ladders and kicking benches at their opponents. I want Pirates of the Caribbean; I want Jackie Chan. This is a first attempt.

The problem with this ruleset as it stands is twofold: first, it's fiddly and abstract. I can see a game slowing down and players being pushed out of the shared fiction as they calculate whether it's better to retreat or press this round. Heck, I'm not even sure how this would generalize to anything bigger than 1-on-1 combat. 

The other risk is that things get boring, with only three options. Even if that's true, we're still doing better than systems where the barbarian's only option is "attack!" But still. What this really needs is a set of special "moves" to draw from, each one an interaction with the environment or a spectacular stunt. Chuck a Flowerpot, Swing from the Chandelier, that kind of thing. Make them into Magic-style cards, with in-fiction triggers and/or metagame requirements to get a bonus or one-off special ability. Heck, print actual physical cards! Maybe I'll publish a deck someday.

Don't think you've seen the last of this...

-V

War in Heaven

Once upon a time, five beings of celestial power were contending over the same patch of real estate.

Of the five, two were siblings, and by virtue of alliance they defeated the other three, killing them one by one and reducing their once-glorious molten bodies to vast chunks of cold mortal matter. Of the survivors, one was called Alef; the other, Tav. With their common enemies gone, peace between the siblings was short-lived. In a second round of celestial combat, Alef overthrew the weaker Tav, stripping away their radiant photosphere and forcing them to withdraw to the very heart of their failing body. In this way Alef became the Last Radiance.

this town ain't big enough for the both of us

But Alef could not bring themselves to destroy their only sibling. Instead of snuffing out the last of Tav's fire, Alef wove a prison around their corpse, a net of power that would keep them contained, alive but unable to re-ignite their body. The web was a work of great subtlety, empowered by living resonators across Tav's surface. This carpet of life drank Alef's power from above and used it to grow stronger, spreading thick and deep on land in water alike.

The system was unstable. Though the biosphere was of Alef, its roots sank deep into Tav's flesh. The defeated sibling whispered in the dreams of flora, enticing new strains to spread uncontrolled, choking out their fellows before dying to tailored plagues, leaving vast swathes of barren ground. In this way Tav grew stronger. 

Volcanos breached the surface. Lava ran in rivers. Forests burned, and vast savannas were buried under molten rock. Tav strained at their prison walls.

Alef wiped it all out and started over.

This time, they added a feedback system: a secondary web of life, mobile and adaptable, to prune and tend the first layer. If the plant life fell out of balance, herds of grazers would push back, preventing the runaway specialization of the first age. Thinking ahead this time, Alef added further safeguards: if the grazers themselves ran off the rails, a hierarchy of predators would ensure that the pendulum swung back.

This worked slightly better.

The new two-layer prison-web was resistant to Tav's escape attempts, but it still tended to break down over time. Every few millennia, Alef was forced to turn their attention to putting out fires (often literal) in their sibling's containment system. This effort was little more than a minor annoyance, and the status quo might have persisted indefinitely, had Alef not had a brilliant idea (not a measure of quality; they can have no other kind).

The Last Radiance decided the problem was that no part of the system understood its own purpose. To remedy this, they would create avatars of their will, conscious sentient beings to maintain and protect the binding web. Alef had invented the soul.

A dilemma faced them, however. Should these new thinking wardens be sensitive to celestial power? Without attunement to the harmonies of the world, they would be unable to sense the effects of their interventions on the containing mechanism. Moreover, Alef would not be able to guide and inform--the creatures' nature would have to be perfect on the first try.

Conversely, sensitivity to the web would leave the beings open to the corrupting voice of Tav. The two powers speak in the same resonance; one cannot be heard without the other. In this way, celestial deafness could be an asset.

Alef hedged their bets and created both. To the people called alefim was granted deep unity with the binding network of life around the planet. They were thoughtful and quiet, with the ability to play the web like a great musical instrument. They had wisdom enough not to proliferate wildly, producing only enough offspring to maintain a steady population, the proper number to maintain the balance of nature without straining its resources.

Then there were the grimmot. From them Alef stripped all sense of the sublime, leaving only the mundane world-as-it-is. They knew nothing of the web, yet by their instincts they strengthened it anyway. The core urges of the grimmot led them to dig tunnels in the earth, great complex labyrinths that dulled Tav's senses and resonated with the carpet of life above. This resonance extended to their runes: though they could not use the web for magic as the alefim did, the grimmot learned to control its flow by engraving sigils into stone and metal.

alefim and grimmot

There were only two problems.

First, Alef's fears regarding corruption were well-founded. Over generations, the purity of the alefim's attunement to Alef weakened. Dissonent children began to be born: children who could feel the web only poorly, if at all; whose touch on it was rough and unsubtle. Weeping, the alefim cast these mutants from their utopian enclaves, only to see the uncouth offshoots band together into tribes of their own: tribes who lacked the alefim's taboo on expansion. Scholars among the alefim named them baazim, but in their own tongue the new people called themselves humanity. They spread far and fast, ecosystems straining under the weight of their petty empires.

Second, bound Tav had learned how to create souls of their own.

Hordes of tavarim tunneled up from below, breaching the smooth halls of the grimmot and poisoning the roots of alefim glade-cities. Nishavek the mother-tree burned to the ground, and proud Zarzayin, gem-city of the grimmot, was overrun by monstrous armies. A proxy war had begun, between the forces of Alef and those of Tav.

The conflict was grossly asymmetric. Alef's power outmatched Tav's by orders of magnitude, and the former could have reduced the latter to lifeless rubble in an instant. Only fraternal mercy kept the apocalypse at bay.

Tav's one advantage was proximity. The war was fought on their home turf, yea, on their very skin. Despite the disparity in power, whatever Alef created Tav could eventually imitate in lesser form. Moreover, restraint of their sibling claimed only part of Alef's attention. Most of their time was spent on celestial matters. Tav's forces, meanwhile, had their progenitor's mind ever on them.

Nevertheless, the tavarim suffered defeat after defeat. Bound by the web of life, Tav was too weak to pose a persistent threat. The forests and plains were cleansed of dark things. Only in the deep places of the world, the abyssal oceans and dark caverns, did Tav have strength sufficient to sustain their children. The grimmot suffered the worst from this--driven from their ancestral delves to defend fortresses that had once been mere entrance-halls, eternally besieged from below.

But this new equilibrium had a weak link of its own: humanity.

Human civilization spread across the world like ink through water. As man struggled against man and woman against woman, some among them learned that the power of the binding-web could be turned to their own advantage. Though they lacked the subtlety for alefim enchantments, human sorcerers discovered how to tear power from the web and bind it to themselves, growing strong and terrible. With each wizard-tower that rose, the web was weakened, and tavarim crept forth to reave once more.

that can't be good for the table

Alef was displeased. This displeasure took the form of cyclic cataclysms, each of which wiped great human empires off the map. Whenever a witch-queen grew too powerful, she would find her realm annihilated by a meteor strike, or reduced to ash by heavenly flame. Yet such was the nature of humanity that after each apocalypse, the survivors would crawl forth and rebuild.

As an equilibrium, this new mode requires more of Alef's attention than before the invention of sentience. Had they their way, Alef would wipe the surface clean of thinking life and return to the previous system of just plants and animals. However, there's no way to make Tav forget the secret of ensoulment. As long as the tavarim exist, Alef needs agents of their own to combat them.

So the war continues, an eternal arms race between powers ascendant and dying. Alef creates the great gem-serpents, and Tav answers with the wyrms of the earth. Tav incubates brutes of living stone, which Alef imitates through sentient storms.

Humans exist in no-man's land, seen by one side as useful dupes, by the other as failed experiments at best, traitors at worst. Nevertheless, in each new age they grow strong, until their hubris calls down fire from above once again.

How long remains this time?

Thoughts

Creation myths are so much fun. This one was inspired by Arnold's Centerra setting, where the Authority's throne is in the heart of the sun. The planet is alive in Centerra, too--with so many great ideas bouncing around, it's hard not to grab a few, mash them up, and sculpt something new and strange.

I like the fusion of sun-vs-dark and heaven-vs-earth; there's a lot of possibility space to explore RE air and height as pure and sacred / stone and depth as profane. Monsters and classic fantasy races get a new lens, too. Alefim and tavarim are sort of like the classic good/evil alignment dichotomy, except they both hate humans. Mankind isn't a favored child in this setting, we're the vermin that nothing seems to get rid of.

On naming: Latin gets mangled a ton for fantasy worlds, so I figured Hebrew could take one for the team on this go-round. -ot and -im are underused plural suffixes anyway, in my opinion. I'm playing fast and loose with phonology here, and semantics are out the window entirely. Sorry.

Yes, the alefim are elves and the grimmot are dwarves. I really like the archetypes, and at this point, having elves who AREN'T evil fascist aesthetes feels like it's the rebellious choice. As an RPG setting, my plan is for adventurers to be human-only. Everybody else knows their divine purpose; it's only humanity who gets to f*** around and find out.

Anyway, the next time you wonder why every cave and basement is full of creepy-crawlies: it's because the earth is the flesh of a dying god. Happy to help!

-V

Consumable Swords

 "And Naegling snapped."

-Beowulf, line 2680

Magic swords have a rough reputation in the OSR. The humble +1 sword is the object of much revilement, and not without reason:

• It's a passive bonus the player has to remember
• It's fungible; get a +2 sword and toss the +1 aside like so much garbage
• It's BORING

Fair enough. Various solutions have been proposed. Let me add one:

MAGIC SWORDS ARE A CONSUMABLE RESOURCE.

Alas, poor +1 sword, we hardly knew ye

Plenty of rulesets have shield-breaking mechanics. Let your shield be shattered for a momentary defensive bonus. You block a dolorous blow, but you lose a piece of equipment. Sometimes the same is true for armor: sunder a helm or bracer to ward off a hit you can't afford to take.

Slap that same mechanic onto a sword. At any time you can shatter your magic weapon to release all its power, really lay on the hurt. Then it's gone. Good luck finding another one.

Another tenet of the OSR is a focus on resources. Combat drains HP, exploration drains torches and rations, social interaction drains... the patience of everyone at the table when the GM does funny voices? Couldn't be me.

Anyway the point is this is another resource to manage. If the ogre in the antechamber is giving you trouble, do you shatter your sword to cleave his thick skull, or save it for the warlock-king in the next room?

Bloodnail

Sword, 1d6 damage. Make all attack rolls twice, keeping the better result. You may choose to strike so hard that the blade shatters, rolling 2d6 damage dice instead of 1 but destroying the sword.

Ok, that's a little more than a +1. But magic swords are supposed to be impressive! A five percentage point increase in to-hit probabilities just doesn't cut it. Maybe automatic 5e-style Advantage is too much, but every buff to your characters is an excuse to pit them against fouler fiends on their next adventure.

Come to think of it, this reminds me of the first enchanted sword I crafted in Minecraft. It had a name; I husbanded its use with jealous fear of the day it would break. When it did, I mourned.

How much cooler if it had exploded, though?

-V

The Flesh and the Devil Can Wait

caro et diabolus expectent

Every reality has its edge cases. The joints of creation don't fit smoothly together, and in the gaps terrific power waits to be seized. There are Secrets As To The Workings Of The World, and only through the World can one know them.

No one can be told what THAUMOS is. You have to see it for yourself.

The first time a wizard spends dawn to dusk in a given hex, they may open themselves to inspiration. If they do, they have a 1-in-6 chance of learning a new Secret.

If inspiration strikes, either roll to determine the Lore...

1. Fire
2. Flesh
3. Beasts
4. Heavens
5. Dream
6. Sea

...or let the wizard choose. 

If the Lore was randomly determined, roll 2 dice and learn the Secret that matches [SUM]. If it was chosen, roll 1 die and learn the matching Secret.

Each Secret occupies a Knowledge slot, of course.

Thoughts

Although THAUMOS is woefully under-playtested, already I fear that the acquisition of new Secrets will be too slow. Currently the only way to learn them is through tutelage by those who already know--even ignoring the clear chicken-and-egg problem, this hardens the borders of acceptable playstyles for those who hope to gain more arcane power. Shall a Lore be forever closed to the Cabal because they slew its only practitioner? And what of those Secrets unknown to any NPC?

These rules aim to kill two birds with one stone. They provide a way to learn Secrets without needing a mentor, while at the same time encouraging exploration. In many hexcrawl games, travel is motivated by the search for new dungeons to delve and treasure to plunder. 

For wizards in THAUMOS the treasure is power, and that too can be plumbed from the world itself.

-V

In praise of abstract inventory

The year is 2019. COVID is but a twinkle in the eye of some far-off bat or pangolin. A gaming group is huddled around a table, playtesting a new science-fantasy RPG.

After an opening vignette in the big city, the band of bold explorers head out beyond the environmental shields, into the toxic wasteland where a few minutes without your rebreather can spell doom. Their destination: an ancient underground laboratory, newly accessible after a recent earthquake. They and their employers hope that the facility contains valuable technology from a time before the divine Judgement that left the world broken.

As they approach the entrance--more of a cave, really--the party is set upon by rabid subterranean beasts. They gun down the animals in short order, and advance to the mouth of the tunnel. One of the characters, a young Primas-ika mercenary, steps forward and shines the beam of their flashlight into the depths.

"Wait a minute," the Narrator interrupts. "Since when do you have a flashlight?"

"Uh, I have a whole spelunking kit," says the Primas-ika's player. "We all picked them up back in the city."

"Read the item list," says the Narrator. "A spelunking kit has rope, pitons, bandages, and a blanket. No flashlight."

The player is incensed. "What kind of spelunking kit doesn't include a light source? I mean, come on. We all knew this adventure was going to be underground. Would I really have left on a month-long wilderness trip to explore a bunch of caves, and not have brought a flashlight?"

"If it's not on your character sheet," the Narrator says, "you don't have it."

At the risk of angering the OSR-verse, I don't care for this kind of situation. There are games where careful inventory management--making sure you have exactly the right tool for the task at hand--is a core part of the fun. That's fine. But it's not the kind of game I want to make.

But how to get around this problem? If the exact words on their character sheets don't control which items the party has access to, what does? When a player says they're taking out their reinforced handcuffs, ten feet of titanium chain, and eight-inch iron stake, should a Narrator protest or shrug their shoulders?

No one is well-served if every interaction with inventory turns into an argument that grinds the game to a halt.

SUPPLY

Yubaba redeeming SUPPLY

My preferred solution is one I first encountered in the game Marrow. I don't know if they invented it or not, but like the Picasso of the tabletop I have stolen the concept.

SUPPLY is quantum inventory, the equivalent of a blank tile in scrabble, an item whose nature is uncertain until it is needed. Marrow phrases it like this:

SUPPLY. Spend SUPPLY to have something clutch, but ubiquitous; a coil of rope, a flask of oil, a piece of jerky. Spend SUPPLY to negate a wandering monster encounter; your torchlight repels the darkness and frightens the monsters therein. Spend SUPPLY to rest easy for an evening; a full belly and a roaring fire is enough to soothe your aches.

"Clutch, but ubiquitous" is such a turn of phrase I want to weep for joy. A rope, when chasms yawn. A ten-foot pole, with pressure-plate traps ahead. A flashlight, at the threshold of the ancient cavern.

Put it in your game. It's great.

Going Further

So is that it? Have we reached into the social web of indie RPGs and plucked out the perfect bandage, fit to pack away this problem with a bow and never think of it again?

Well, ok, no. That's never how it works. Adding any amount of subjectivity to the rules is tricky business. What counts as "ubiquitous?" Rope and torches, sure, but what about those reinforced handcuffs? No? But maybe the character is a bounty hunter--surely they'd have such paraphernalia to hand. So the argument begins again.

The confrontation at the beginning of this blog post is just a symptom of a larger, eternal quandary: how to make sure that both players and Narrator feel like their respective conceptions of the game world are being respected. SUPPLY is a piece of the puzzle, but it's still just a patch over that fundamental tension. Is the responsibility of the Narrator to adjudicate game reality as they see it, or to aim for outcomes that will be satisfying to the players?

Ok, this post isn't really about abstract inventory anymore. But hark! I am not some armchair philosopher, tossing out thorny issues just to make my readers squirm. Balancing consistency, believability, and fun is a hard problem, true.

But I think I've solved it.

Stay tuned for more on how my next system, THAUMOS, turns GMing on its head...

Hexcrawl: The Southern Coasts

Luke Gearing's masterwork Wolves Upon the Coast has put me in a hexcrawl kind of mood.

The game I'm working on right now is called THAUMOS, and it puts the players in the boots of quite potent wizards, working with their retainers and lackeys to gain power and influence across the land. To make that sort of game work, you need land!

The idea is that the party will start in Fort Bergengard (0601), a gaggle of apprentices sent south by their master to annex this region to his dread empire. The map is divided into three city-states (from east to west: the Flowerlands, the Duskenlands, and the Crownslands) hemmed in by mountains, swamps, ocean, and the cliffs of a high plateau.

Magic items shown in bold are all drawn from my list of 50 System-agnostic Magic Items. Spells used and Dooms suffered by NPC wizards come from the various Lores of monosophia.

Made with HexKit

0101: Failed Mine

A lonesome peak leans at an unnatural angle, supported by inner veins of iron melted and cast by some unnatural primordial force. A band of entrepreneurs from Dancing tried to start an iron mine here, but they were slaughtered by goat-men. Their families would be grateful for their remains.

0201: Goat-man Nomads

Fear of Henstooth has driven this clan of goat-men west across the White Snake River. Soon, they will be forced around the northwest corner of Snakehead Lake and come into direct conflict with the Triplets.

0301: Grey Hills

Here the wizard Henstooth jealously guards the Midnight Tower, built of deep blue stone on a confluence of ley-lines. She harries scouting parties from Dusk with bands of wolves and bears, herself taking the shape of a giant vulture. She knows that Smoker could crush her if he made a concerted effort, and fear is consuming her. Henstooth wears Grandmother's Jaws.

0401: Skaffenfals

Here Bear River plunges a full bowshot down a granite cliff. Rival clans of eel-men live at the top and bottom of the falls.

0501: Screamer

A winged terror lairs in these peaks. survivors are never clear on its exact nature, only that it has vast wings and emits piercing shrieks. Screamer was once a wizard, a survivor of the third Doom of Beasts who slew the Ur-Predator and claimed the ultimate hunting form.

0601: Fort Bergengard

Gateway to the north, a stone-and-steel cork plugging the only pass through the mountains. Lady Ghaith, disdainful of everyone and everything to the south, commands. She would very much like to be rid of the creature Screamer that lairs to the west. She wields Aigenthwait.

0701: Apex Temple

Steps carved into the mountainside lead to a peak with a perfectly flat top, as if cut by some massive blade. Every full 24 hours spent here staring up at the sky carries a 3-in-6 chance of learning a new Secret of the Heavens, and a 1-in-6 chance of instant death as the sky claims an offering. Deliberate sacrifice may draw the eye of a prince of the upper air.

0102: Goat-man Raiders

A party of a dozen goat-men is scouting new homelands for their tribe. They have been happily pillaging the outlying farms of the Triplets for a few weeks. Their leader, Ouluo, wields Corbie's Claw.

0202: Snakehead Lake

White Snake River does not lose its strength as it passes through, a strong current down the middle of the lake. The rest of the waters are milk-pale and placid. The lake is unnaturally deep, but any straight length of wood touched against the bottom becomes an implement of power. Further contact between such an implement and the water of the lake dissolves the wood like sugar.

0302: Dusk

Ring-city surrounding the Dusktower (pale purple stone). Confluence of ley-lines. Home of the wizard Smoker, although he spends half his time at the Noontower. Administrated by Blackfingers, a failed apprentice who uses his magic to hunt sedition. Smoker's moniker comes from the interaction between his robes and the 2nd Doom of Fire.

0402: Curds

Town with an economy based on beef and dairy, sometimes called "the milk-jug of Dusk." Ruled by a plutocratic council of five cheese-lords. The town's mascot, Dun Bess, is missing.

0502: Bearbridge

Town of farmers and fishermen, sitting at the eastern end of the bridge from which it takes its name. Trade has slowed in recent years as the relationship between Dusk and Bloom has cooled. However, enterprising merchants from Curds still make the long trip over the pass to the North, and for that they must pay the toll at Bearbridge. The local leader One-ear, a massive and jovial man, does his best to retain the favor of both nearby cities. He carries Bullkiller and knows Secrets of Flesh (1, 3, & 9). He uses his detached ear to spy on his fellow villagers.

0602: Floral Banners

The Brass Maiden's armies muster here, churning the fields to mud. Lord Dhommen (wears the Champion's Helm) commands troops who are growing weary of waiting for orders. He is unsure whether the Maiden intends to strike east towards Dusk or north toward Fort Bergengard.

0702: The Devilspipe

Fume-spewing volcano. Lair of the wizard Flamewatcher (Fire 1-12, Flesh 2, Sea 11). Every week spent studying the volcano grants access to a random Secret of Fire (do not re-roll duplicates). Flamewatcher suffers from the 3rd Doom of the Heavens, and so cannot leave his mountain lair. He will share all his lore in exchange for a cure. Flamewatcher shares the volcano with a phoenix who pines for him with unrequited passion.

0103: Dancing

Farming village cradled in a bend of the Black Snake River. Glanneth leads, a hero after killing four goat-men with Fletcherskip. Makers of animated straw-men, and eager to sell them as porters.

0203: The Triplets

Borders between the towns of Thatch, Lure, and Rye have blurred over the years, with a tangle of bridges built across the Black Snake and White Snake. However, the three towns remain stubbornly independent, maintaining separate governments and codes of law despite their ties. Bad blood among the ruling class has prevented them from mounting a campaign against either the Snakehead Bandits to the east or the goat-men to the northwest. Notable figures include Snowhead, a white-haired young urchin who scams newcomers using the Peddler's Pouch.

0303: Snakehead Bandits

A group of mercenaries has taken to preying on caravans between Dusk and the Triplets. Thus far, Smoker has been stretched too thin to deal with them, but the bandit leader Brell (bears the Soulclaw) knows his luck is bound to run out.

0403: Glass Tree

The road skirts near the forest here, and when the moon is high at night a strange glow can be seen through the trees. Hidden in a secluded glade grows a tree of glass, heavy with many-colored fruits and emitting a soft melody. The tree is guarded by razor-limbed glass dryads. Plucking a fruit causes the branch it grows on to shatter, spraying razor-sharp glass three paces in every direction. A fruit so plucked can be used as an orb, serving as an implement of power, although humming the tree's melody in reverse will destroy it.

0503: Ruins of Flussgard

A once-mighty fortress, reduced to rubble. The vaults below are full of traps and murder-golems, guardians of the Golemlord's treasure that have long outlasted their master.

0603: Bloom

The city of flowers. Ruled by the Brass Maiden, who wears Shae's Mantle and wields Dominion. Greydorre and Golden Grass have shielded her from the passage of years, but their power is stretched thin. She is secretly desperate for a more permanent solution to mortality.

0703: Wolf Lake

Packs of wolves roam the northern and western banks. To the southeast, clear waters gradually choke on brown mud until they blend into the swamp.

0104: Pitchfork Tower

A slender spire of dark stone rises right at the edge of the high plateau, visible from below for miles around. Two-thirds of the way up, the tower splits in three, a seemingly-impossible architectural marvel. Two rival sorcerers dwell within, locked in a bitter struggle over the third tine.

0204: Yoxosotinax

Small village hidden by a dense wall of pine trees. The villagers are all of Üxan ethnicity and speak no Thraish. They do not remember how their ancestors arrived here. Led by Gurüm, a simple shepherd who came to power when he discovered the circlet Authority.

0304: The Knotwood

The trees here grow tangled together, forming a three-dimensional maze of wooden bridges, platforms, and tunnels. "The Green Prowler," a Woken Tree, hunts bearers of fire or steel. Protruding from its body is the Oakheart; ripping the staff free turns the monster into an ordinary tree.

0404: Ash Town

Small hamlet, kept alive only by the patronage of the wizard Smoker (he rests here when traveling between Dusk and the Noontower). Also notable for its fine guard dogs, of which there are 1d6+2 available for sale at any given time.

0504: Claybone Fields

The site of an ancient battle between Üxan colonial forces and the armies of the Golemlord. The smashed golems are inert, but the many human bones rise each night into a skeletal parody of martial array, dressed in corroded Üxan mail, their spears thirsty for living blood.

0604: Mintford Ferry

The currents of the Wolf River are strong and unpredictable between Wolf Lake and the junction with the Bear River. The only safe way to cross is on the ferry, run by an old man named Mint. He is secretly a minor wizard (Sea 4 & 9), and he occasionally demands extra payment halfway across the river, sinking the boat and swimming to safety if refused.

0704: Julip

Village nestled in a stinking swamp, center of a network of marsh-dwelling families. Led by Aila, who metes out justice using the axe Rexxenvalt. The tail from a blue-headed swamp rat can be made into an implement of power, although the touch of blood will dissolve it.

0105: Jungle of the Mushroom-People

The dense jungles of the high plateau house a civilization of their own, fungal rather than mammal. The human inhabitants of the plateau have treaties with the mushroom-people, but strangers not making the proper obeisance will be drugged and collected for domestication.

0205: Sheer

Town, guards the base of the only descent from the high plateau for a hundred miles. Padrix (wears the Horatian Greaves) commands the guard force. He obsessively studies what little is known of the civilization on the high plateau, and has become enamored of their strange culture.

0305: Black Snake Bridge

The old stone bridge collapsed a year ago, and workers from Crowns have built a makeshift string of barges to take its place. The collapse was engineered by conspirators from Fetchport, who hope that without a river crossing Crowns will lose its grip on the lands east of the Black Snake River. Work is led by Ethal, who wears Grogangrip.

0405: Kettle

Fishing town named for a nearby rock formation. Led by Elmore, an ancient man who secretly harbors anti-Crowns sympathies. A unit of elite soldiers from Crowns is stationed here, under the command of Wexxen. Their nominal mission is to assassinate the wizard Smoker as he travels between Dusk and the Noontower, but they have so far been content to laze around terrorizing the locals. Wexxen carries Glassrazor (a gift from Thraix), but he is too afraid to ignite it.

0505: The Noontower

Bone-white stone, built on a confluence of ley lines. The wizard Smoker spends half his time here, the other half in Dusk. The tower is tended by Smoker's apprentice Meadow. She uses the Bow of Years to send messages directly to Dusk. If she calls for help, Smoker will arrive in eight hours, having used the Demon Bridle to ride a horse to death and beyond.

0605: Ruins of Darxax

Cliff-city. The only foothold Üxan ever gained in the North. Destroyed two generations ago by the forces of the Golemlord, who lost his own life in the siege. Now it is nothing but an enormous tomb, haunted by a single surviving murder-golem which bears the stone Claywaker in its forehead.

0705: Wheel-on-the-Island

Town of sailors, merchants, and corsairs. Thraish, Üxan, and the sailors' argot Salt are all spoken here. Stammer, a minor wizard, rules by acclaim of his fellow captains--word of his brilliance in fending off raids from Nüx has spread as far as Crowns. However, he has fallen in love with the Brass Maiden, and some are beginning to doubt his ability to protect Wheel's independence from Bloom. He wears the Galilean Boots.

0106: Vlaagos

Cliff-city. Despite its poor harbor, ships are constantly docked to trade for the fruits, spices, and ointments of the high plateau. The ruling class are giants, eight feet tall and hairless--the result of careful breeding and a strict chemical regimen that begins in the womb. Led by Uldraa, a wizard who knows the secret of commanding lightning (Heavens 11). She carries Might.

0206: Fetchport

Once a city, killed by its proximity to the more prosperous Crowns. Clinging to life on fishing and what little trade passes down from the high plateau through Sheer and Vlaagos. Led by Rexxa, a fiery young woman who killed her predecessor in a duel. She carries Cloudcutter.

0306: Crowns

Thriving port city, ripe with trade from Üxan via Kaxarax. Ruled by triumvirate of merchants-lords: Lenna, Thraix, and Dhommas. Lenna is the sister of Stammer, and hides her use of Dream-magic to gain influence. Thraix  is a retired pirate; he wears Raker and suffers crippling insomnia (Lenna has stolen the sleep from his eyes). Dhommas is a charlatan-turned-prophet, whose latest pseudonym comes from the magic ring he wore until it was recently stolen (he is desperate to get it back).

0506: The Dawntower

Pale yellow stone, built on a confluence of ley lines. Üxan soldiers guard it, led by Rü, a skilled hypnotist. They have no wizard to claim the tower, but they will lay down their lives to prevent a foreigner from controlling it.

0606: Nüx

Colonial Üxan outpost, lifeline to Darxax before its fall. Ruled by Darüx Sotin, Darüx Gum's cousin. Sotin is an expert hypnotist but a poor leader: recent failed raids against Wheel-on-the-Island have his commanders muttering mutiny in the taverns.

0207: The Isle of Scales

Temples to a long-tongued god. Men born with webbed feet and gills. Women who give themselves to the creatures of the deep. A king who feasts on human flesh. Here one may learn Secrets of Flesh and Sea, but at what cost?

0507: Karaxax

Colonial port of Üxan. Hemmed in against the bay by a petrified forest. Ruler is Darüx Gum, a scholar and master hypnotist. he pays lip service to Üxan, but secretly yearns to rule the island as a king. Gum wields the Papermind.

0607: Locust Temple

The living god of a long-vanished insectoid civilization waits within, chitin and mandibles untouched by the eons.

Random Encounters

Anywhere

1. Mortally wounded warrior, kept alive only by the magic of his shield, Baisgard. He is beyond any help save powerful Secrets of Flesh.

2. Red-haired horseman from the north named Groge, riding Nornthunder and bearing the Witching Lamp. He is seeking revenge against the wizard Stutter, who seduced his son and then mutilated the lad when she grew bored. Stutter has changed her name to Lenna and now rules the city of Crowns.

3. Simple swineherd named Sack on his way to market. Among his sows is Squealer. He’s happy to show off her unique talents.

4. Cow thieves. Two young men (Orff and Blister) from Curds, traveling with the stolen Dun Bess. They did not think their plan through, and they are getting hungry. Eager to accept coin or food for access to Bess’ magic milk.

5. Dhommas, an ambitious thief from Crowns. He stole the ring Dhommas from its former bearer during a parade, and he has been on the run ever since. Recently he discovered the utility of the ring’s power, and he has acquired a following of young women who see him as an instrument of divine love.

6. Gopher, professional message-carrier and herald. Talks a mile a minute and will do anything for a quick coin. Wears Rennershoon. Roll to see which of the nearest two settlements he has news from.

Duskenlands

7. Catira “Cattie,” a young woman from Ash Town. Having grown up a witness to the power that Smoker wields, she is determined to become the Brass Maiden’s apprentice and acquire power of her own. However, she has gotten hopelessly lost, and has no idea how to get to Bloom. Accompanied by an extremely loyal war dog and the Crimson Hound.

8. (Night only) War party of lost skeletons from the Claybone Fields. Seeking their comrades, but they have no sense of direction.

9. The wizard Gutter, a drifting and gurgling sack of flesh. Traveling with him are Sigil and Mocker, his two apprentices. Sigil bears Scriber; Mocker wears the Skaldenface. They are headed for Snakehead Lake so that the apprentices may fashion implements of power.

10. Emissaries from the Triplets, on a quest for help with bandits and goat-men.

11. Spies from Bloom, badly disguised as merchants.

12. Smoker, traveling.

Crownslands

7. Fetchport saboteurs searching for ways to strike at Crowns. Led by Rexxa, carrying Cloudcutter.

8. Foragers from Yoxosotinax. 2d6 peasants equipped for hunting and gathering.

9. Merchants from the Triplets. Among their mundane wares is the Sunheart Gem.

10. Soldiers on patrol out of Crowns. They want a bribe to let travelers pass unmolested.

11. Charmiir, a noble scholar from the high plateau, sightseeing. He is seven and a half feet tall, hairless, and rides in the Silk Chariot. Because of his poor eyesight, his attendants constantly narrate to him. He scorns interpreters, preferring to communicate using the Whispering Twins.

12. Annara, seeks allies in her vengeance quest against Thraix, one of the three rulers of Crowns. She wears the Cattenails.

Flowerlands

7. Floral deserters. 1d6x4 hungry soldiers, halfway to turning bandit. 2-in-6 chance they are led by a skilled swordsman with a vigor slot.

8. Merchants from the North. Carry news across the border.

9. Alaith, an expert duelist traveling in search of a worthy opponent. She wears the Footpad’s Foe and uses Paxcord in her off-hand to destroy her opponent’s weapon.

10. Spies from Dusk, badly disguised as pilgrims.

11. The Seeker in Blue. Wears the Blue Cloak and carries Maidensborre. Believes he is chosen by the divine, as he has used the sword nine times and never yet been found unworthy.

12. Nollen the Bard. A traveling storyteller madly in love with the idea of the Brass Maiden. Twice he has been turned away from her court; execution awaits him should he appear at the gates again. He plays Homesinger and draws with Soultracer.

Border Regions

7. Screamer.

8. Goat-man foragers. 3d6 +10 peasants.

9. Goat-man warriors. 

10. (If within 2 hexes of the Grey Hills) Midnight tower light patrol: 2d6 wolves.

11. (If within 2 hexes of the Grey Hills) Midnight tower heavy patrol: 1d6 bears.

12. Henstooth circling above in giant vulture form. If she spots a group headed towards the Midnight Tower, she will send more and more beasts to harry them until they turn back.

Üxan Colony

7. Basilisk

8. Feral mindhunter hounds (2d6)

9. Üxan patrol from Kaxanax: hypnotist, 3d6 warriors, and 1d6-1 mindhunter hounds

10. Üxan patrol from Nüx: hypnotist and 2d6 warriors

11. Treasure-hunters from the mainland, led by Giant, a very small man who wears the Horatian Greaves

12. Omen of insectoid divinity

Open Sea

7. Üxan ship Sükanüx out of Nüx, badly damaged after a failed raid against Wheel-on-the-Island

8. Roundship Woolspade out of Crowns – carrying textiles and salted meat to Kaxarax

9. Ship Ochre Run out of Vlaagos – carrying spices and unguents to Crowns

10. Corsair galley Mossbone out of Wheel-on-the-Island

11. Narcissistic whale demanding flattery

12. Wizard from the Isle of Scales, riding a leviathan

For aesthetics' sake, here's a copy of the map without all those hex numbers in the way. I love the look of these old-school tiles, but I guess if I ever want to publish this map I'll have to draw my own. That'll be a different kind of adventure!