You are a cultured cannibal, equally at home while sipping fine wine as while dining on human flesh. Tonight is feast night, and you will get your meal while trying to get the other cannibals to do as you bid.
Saturday 23 June 2018
Cultured Cannibals: a 1-page RPG
PDF here
You are a cultured cannibal, equally at home while sipping fine wine as while dining on human flesh. Tonight is feast night, and you will get your meal while trying to get the other cannibals to do as you bid.
You are a cultured cannibal, equally at home while sipping fine wine as while dining on human flesh. Tonight is feast night, and you will get your meal while trying to get the other cannibals to do as you bid.
Monday 19 February 2018
Healing Magic is Horrible
“Healing magic isn’t clean. Not by a long shot. Magic is messy and unpredictable, despite being (technically) a science. When you heal someone, you aren’t putting your hands on them and saying the magic words and they’re all better. You’re taking the two ragged ends of the wound and convincing the person’s body to accept them. Or cauterizing an injury with your bare hands. Or just telling death to fuck off. It sucks.”
“Healing magic is brutal, traumatizing, and dangerous, for both parties involved. It’s like performing surgery, but your tools are all rigged with sensitive magical explosives that can go off partway through the operation. Have you ever tried to negotiate with an infection? Hearing their rasping, sickly voices, the smell of disease in your nose… it’s enough to drive anyone to madness. I once saw guy break a leg while he was with a plant mage; the bone was just hanging out. The crazy fucker cut the damn thing off and shoved a sapling in the wound. Pete needs to prune his legs now.”
“Does a damn fucking good job though.”
TL;DR: healers are less this:
And more this...
Crossed with this...
And a lot more blood
“Healing magic is brutal, traumatizing, and dangerous, for both parties involved. It’s like performing surgery, but your tools are all rigged with sensitive magical explosives that can go off partway through the operation. Have you ever tried to negotiate with an infection? Hearing their rasping, sickly voices, the smell of disease in your nose… it’s enough to drive anyone to madness. I once saw guy break a leg while he was with a plant mage; the bone was just hanging out. The crazy fucker cut the damn thing off and shoved a sapling in the wound. Pete needs to prune his legs now.”
“Does a damn fucking good job though.”
TL;DR: healers are less this:
And more this...
Crossed with this...
And a lot more blood
Thursday 15 February 2018
The Hag of Brewer's Wood
This is a small, simple area/adventure you can plop into your campaign wherever. It works best in a northern swamp, boggy and cold. It is shown here in a hexmap format. It uses the silver piece standard, so if you're using D&D or something, just convert all cash to gold.
Brewer's wood isn't quite a town: more like a collection of campfires, tents, and other assorted vagabonds and bandits. They aren't all bad, but the whole place is quite unpleasant.
Random Encounters in Brewer's Wood
1d6:
33.21 has a wooden wall trying to protect the hunters squatting beside it from the cold winds from the snowlands. It doesn't work, and they are miserable and cold. They will trade you meat and gold for warmth.
The Hag of Brewer's Wood
The Hag of Brewer's wood resides in 34.21. Her name is Ulva Von Stein. The hex itself is shrouded in mist, which lets people in, but does not let them out without permission from Ulva, who lives in a giant barrel in the middle of the hex.
She’s been stealing children from the town and burying them in the swamp in barrels. She wants children of her own, but doesn't quite know how to go about it. Some of the children are still alive. Others are undead. If she is threatened, she will raise 2d4 barrels from the ground. 1d4-1 of them will burst open and coughing, half dead children will slide out. The rest will be smashed open from the inside, and ghoulish children will appear, hungry for flesh. Returning living children to their parents will net you 5 silver each.
Ulva wants to be left alone, but will trade you alcohol for necessities or more children. The alcohol allows you to walk through the mists surrounding the swamp. In her hut, there are 1d6 bottles of special mead, labeled with a walking corpse. She won't sell you these. They smell like death, but taste like oddly meaty honey. Drinking one will allow you command mindless undead for 24 hours by speaking to them.
There is a recipe in her hut, which allows a necromancer to make the undead-commanding alcohol (it takes a magically incribed barrel costing 20 silver, 40 silver worth of honey, and some magical energy, as well as 1 month to ferment in a barrel with a corpse in it, and produces 5 bottles). The bottles can be sold for 30 silver each, or the recipe for 100 silver.
Random Encounters in Brewer's Wood
1d6:
- 1d6 hunters with fresh food, in good spirits.
- 1d6 hunters without food, desperate, will trade (they have next to nothing, and if they aren’t bartered with, 3-in-6 chance one will try to steal from you).
- A family of 1d6 huddled around a fire (1d4-1 children). They are neutral, but become friendly if you offer them food. They will not share their food with you (they don’t have enough to go around as it is).
- 1d6 bandits who want everything you own.
- 1d6 bandits enforcing a toll (1d12 sp/person)
- 1d4 small zombie children soaked in alcohol. They came from 34.21. 1-in-6 chance that it will instead be one living child, who will tell you about Ulva Von Stein.
33.21 has a wooden wall trying to protect the hunters squatting beside it from the cold winds from the snowlands. It doesn't work, and they are miserable and cold. They will trade you meat and gold for warmth.
The Hag of Brewer's Wood
The Hag of Brewer's wood resides in 34.21. Her name is Ulva Von Stein. The hex itself is shrouded in mist, which lets people in, but does not let them out without permission from Ulva, who lives in a giant barrel in the middle of the hex.
She’s been stealing children from the town and burying them in the swamp in barrels. She wants children of her own, but doesn't quite know how to go about it. Some of the children are still alive. Others are undead. If she is threatened, she will raise 2d4 barrels from the ground. 1d4-1 of them will burst open and coughing, half dead children will slide out. The rest will be smashed open from the inside, and ghoulish children will appear, hungry for flesh. Returning living children to their parents will net you 5 silver each.
Ulva wants to be left alone, but will trade you alcohol for necessities or more children. The alcohol allows you to walk through the mists surrounding the swamp. In her hut, there are 1d6 bottles of special mead, labeled with a walking corpse. She won't sell you these. They smell like death, but taste like oddly meaty honey. Drinking one will allow you command mindless undead for 24 hours by speaking to them.
There is a recipe in her hut, which allows a necromancer to make the undead-commanding alcohol (it takes a magically incribed barrel costing 20 silver, 40 silver worth of honey, and some magical energy, as well as 1 month to ferment in a barrel with a corpse in it, and produces 5 bottles). The bottles can be sold for 30 silver each, or the recipe for 100 silver.
Drawn by some medieval dude.
Monday 29 January 2018
Lint and the Other Lints
Everything exists.
Lint is a world in a state of perpetual paradox and contradicting truths. It is the world where the cat is simultaneously dead and alive. People manage to survive in it anyway. Nothing is constant, everything exists and doesn’t. And people conveniently ignore it when it comes up.
Elves don’t exist. They also walked down from the stars a few thousand years ago and built their cities from meteorites. Then, everything evolved from elves being corrupted by dragonic magic. Nobody has heard of an elf, but the forest is full of them. They only live in their meteor-cities.
Humans were the first race to walk the earth, where they ran with the dogs and the horses. But the Ikuna have been around for longer, back when humans were still grubbing in the dirt. Dragons are experiments by elf wizards, but elves sometimes don’t exist, so dragons are also the primal manifestations of magic from when the world was created.
Nothing is constant. Continents shift, kingdoms aren’t where you remember them. A race of bird men suddenly own all the cities near the mountains, and always have. The next day, they’ve never existed.
There are knights, the Order of the One True Land, who remember the old worlds. They’ve sewn their mouths shut to stop themselves from screaming out in madness, and inscribe their findings on enormous books for people to read. Sometimes, those books disappear, and then the knights know they are off to the places of Lint that don’t exist right now. This is how they recruit new members. Anyone who can read through the entire, rambling tomb learns to see through worlds.
Goblins can always see through worlds, when they exist. That’s why they’re all mad. Dragons hide their hordes in hopes that they won’t be stolen when the dragon disappears for a while. Elves just mysteriously answer ‘we were in the fey lands.’ Really, they have no idea what happened, besides faint memories of a world much like this one.
There is only one god, but he is a myth, and he is all the gods, and he exists alongside the other gods. He sometimes lets people come back from the dead, but resurrection is impossible, and it’s also quite easy.
The Embraced think all this business is silly and stupid. In some worlds, they hide underground, waiting in hibernation for the paradox storms to bring them back to their queen.
Everything exists. Anything can happen. Anyone can be.
Lint is a world in a state of perpetual paradox and contradicting truths. It is the world where the cat is simultaneously dead and alive. People manage to survive in it anyway. Nothing is constant, everything exists and doesn’t. And people conveniently ignore it when it comes up.
Elves don’t exist. They also walked down from the stars a few thousand years ago and built their cities from meteorites. Then, everything evolved from elves being corrupted by dragonic magic. Nobody has heard of an elf, but the forest is full of them. They only live in their meteor-cities.
Humans were the first race to walk the earth, where they ran with the dogs and the horses. But the Ikuna have been around for longer, back when humans were still grubbing in the dirt. Dragons are experiments by elf wizards, but elves sometimes don’t exist, so dragons are also the primal manifestations of magic from when the world was created.
Nothing is constant. Continents shift, kingdoms aren’t where you remember them. A race of bird men suddenly own all the cities near the mountains, and always have. The next day, they’ve never existed.
There are knights, the Order of the One True Land, who remember the old worlds. They’ve sewn their mouths shut to stop themselves from screaming out in madness, and inscribe their findings on enormous books for people to read. Sometimes, those books disappear, and then the knights know they are off to the places of Lint that don’t exist right now. This is how they recruit new members. Anyone who can read through the entire, rambling tomb learns to see through worlds.
Goblins can always see through worlds, when they exist. That’s why they’re all mad. Dragons hide their hordes in hopes that they won’t be stolen when the dragon disappears for a while. Elves just mysteriously answer ‘we were in the fey lands.’ Really, they have no idea what happened, besides faint memories of a world much like this one.
There is only one god, but he is a myth, and he is all the gods, and he exists alongside the other gods. He sometimes lets people come back from the dead, but resurrection is impossible, and it’s also quite easy.
The Embraced think all this business is silly and stupid. In some worlds, they hide underground, waiting in hibernation for the paradox storms to bring them back to their queen.
Everything exists. Anything can happen. Anyone can be.
Tuesday 9 January 2018
The Ikuna Part I | They Who Conquered Death
A thousand years ago, they conquered death.
An army of Ikuna, three million strong, marched to the gates of the Last Fortress, to war with the world beyond the world. Zira, She In Pain, trembled at their approach, and Lady Dogrunner pulled the race of men from their path.
The souls of the dead fought back, their desperation and anger crashing against the Ikuna like an ocean against a mountain. The dead were cut down, and trampled under the Ikuna’s ironclad feet.
The Last Fortress was taken. Many Ikuna died. Broken bodies littered the doorsteps of the Last Fortress, smashed, aged, and destroyed. But the Ikuna had won. Death was theirs.
Ninety thousand Ikuna survived the assault on the Last Fortress. Ninety thousand creatures who had conquered death.
An Ikuna is tall. Taller than any man, and stronger too. Smarter as well. And better-looking. Pale, graceful, and inhumanly strong. Inhumanly quick. Inhuman in everything but basic shape.
Ikuna are perfect. They spent hundreds of years in the pursuit of perfection. Then a hundred more in the wallows of debauchery. Many have brought themselves back to perfection once again.
Their swords are heavy enough to be used as a bludgeon. Their armor is too thick to be dented by anything less than a dragon. Their magic shatters minds and bodies alike, leaving twisted amalgamations of flesh in their wake.
None of this matters.
Ikuna do not use swords. Ikuna do not wear armor. Ikuna do not use magic. They don’t have to. They don’t want to. They spent lifetimes fighting as the best the world… any world, had to offer.
Ikuna will not fight you. They will speak. Or they may stay silent. They may try to kill you, but it will be halfhearted. A joke they have not heard, or an impressive display of skill will stop them in their tracks.
Death was the greatest challenge any Ikuna could face. In the end, even it fell before them. They do not die.
Some say death is frightened of them. Frightened to go near them. The greatest of the Ikuna cannot even kill: death will not enter their presence, no matter how much it should.
An Ikuna isn’t a challenge to kill. Not the first time. Maybe not even in the second. Fighting them is almost… easy. You stab them, and they go down quietly, without even so much as a sigh. But they’ll be back.
They won’t fight as skillfully as you.
They won’t scheme as cunningly as you.
They won’t try as hard as you.
Because in the end?
They only have to win once.
An army of Ikuna, three million strong, marched to the gates of the Last Fortress, to war with the world beyond the world. Zira, She In Pain, trembled at their approach, and Lady Dogrunner pulled the race of men from their path.
The souls of the dead fought back, their desperation and anger crashing against the Ikuna like an ocean against a mountain. The dead were cut down, and trampled under the Ikuna’s ironclad feet.
The Last Fortress was taken. Many Ikuna died. Broken bodies littered the doorsteps of the Last Fortress, smashed, aged, and destroyed. But the Ikuna had won. Death was theirs.
Ninety thousand Ikuna survived the assault on the Last Fortress. Ninety thousand creatures who had conquered death.
An Ikuna is tall. Taller than any man, and stronger too. Smarter as well. And better-looking. Pale, graceful, and inhumanly strong. Inhumanly quick. Inhuman in everything but basic shape.
Ikuna are perfect. They spent hundreds of years in the pursuit of perfection. Then a hundred more in the wallows of debauchery. Many have brought themselves back to perfection once again.
Their swords are heavy enough to be used as a bludgeon. Their armor is too thick to be dented by anything less than a dragon. Their magic shatters minds and bodies alike, leaving twisted amalgamations of flesh in their wake.
None of this matters.
Ikuna do not use swords. Ikuna do not wear armor. Ikuna do not use magic. They don’t have to. They don’t want to. They spent lifetimes fighting as the best the world… any world, had to offer.
Ikuna will not fight you. They will speak. Or they may stay silent. They may try to kill you, but it will be halfhearted. A joke they have not heard, or an impressive display of skill will stop them in their tracks.
Death was the greatest challenge any Ikuna could face. In the end, even it fell before them. They do not die.
Some say death is frightened of them. Frightened to go near them. The greatest of the Ikuna cannot even kill: death will not enter their presence, no matter how much it should.
An Ikuna isn’t a challenge to kill. Not the first time. Maybe not even in the second. Fighting them is almost… easy. You stab them, and they go down quietly, without even so much as a sigh. But they’ll be back.
They won’t fight as skillfully as you.
They won’t scheme as cunningly as you.
They won’t try as hard as you.
Because in the end?
They only have to win once.
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