Subway Megadungeons

Here's a half-formed thought on megadungeon mapping. (albeit one that has probably already been done to death, then resurrected as a zombie thrall, turned by clerics, dispatched by adventurers, and then ground down for glue)

Need an megadungeon/underworld map quick? Use an underground map ('subway' in Western Continentalist).

• Each station marker is either a single isolated room, or a Dyson Logos/Dave's Mapper geomorph; 
• interchanges between lines are larger pre-planned clusters of levels; 
• the lines between stations are the seemingly endless tunnels, sewers, burrowings and wormholed cellars that give the undercity its intimidating scale. 
• The railway interchanges? They might be Saturday Night Specials, sealed sub-areas, or dimensional portals to other worlds entirely.

I've recently decided to expand the Vaults into a full-scale Tekumel-style underworld. Being an unabashed Englishman I've decided to use the classic London Underground map as the basis of my underworld.

Here's a spatially corrected version (created by Mark Noad) which combines the clarity of information of the classic Harry Beck schematic map with the spatial clarity of the 1930s geographic version.

The existing Vaults megadungeon will be roughly where the Bank-Monument interchange is. Lots of connections from there to as yet undefined areas underneath other parts of the Lost City of Nagoh. Some might spin off from Level 1 of the existing megadungeon, others from levels further down.

All I need to do is repurpose the exasperatingly familiar pale blue line of the River Thames as a canyon, rift, escarpment, or perhaps some sort of odd underground environmental anomaly, and Bob's yer muvva's bruvva: instant undercity ~and~ a schematic layout of the Lost City of Nagoh.

Yes, this is all very lazy DM. But I have good form for that. My world map? The Green Lantern map of Mosaic. My Sea of Os'r map? An old map of the Aegean Sea, flipped and rotated. It works for me. Less time wasted mapping = more time for play.

Pic Source: Mark Noad

The Villars

There is a 20% chance any castle/settlement encounter on the Nagai Plains* is with a Villar, one of the famous living towers of the Wilds.

* Between the Deus Tines, the Crumbling Hexlands, the Footprints of Ayrvaat and all the ruins, lost cities, brigadoons, soft places, nomad tribes and ideocults out on the Plains I'm surprised there's any room left for the grass.

What does a Villar look like? Well, pretty much this:

That little blob to the bottom right. Your guy.

Most Villars amble along with a slow, smooth elegance (the inhabitants feel less rocking than in a ship) which covers the ground as rapidly as a running horse. Others stand still for years on end, arms crossed and 'chin' rested contemplatively on one immense hand. Yes, Villars are able to climb, albeit slowly and with great care.

These self-willed colossi of unknown origin are perfectly happy to have people move in to their summit towers, it seems to fulfil them in some undisclosed manner. They will happily negotiate to travel to particular locations in return for maintenance work, repairs, beautification, or the eviction of annoying pests (birds, harpies, etc). Villars are rarely if ever hostile (treat all 'hostile' reaction rolls as 'avoid/ignore'), but will occasionally stomp or kick in self-defence. Hoofed by an unhappy castle? Save or die I'd say.

A Villar is largely immune to mind control magic (charm castle? Fek right arf!) and is protected from most physical harm by its massive size and stone-hard skin. It takes immense power to do anything more than mildly inconvenience a Villar. An earthquake spell or horn of blasting might do one some harm, whereas something like move earth or stone to mud might cause them to trip or stumble. Why not try seeing what happens if you summon an earth elemental inside a Villar's leg? That should put a smile on the GM's face...

The walking towers will not approach within 'sight' range (~11 miles) of normal, sedentary castles or cities, which they refer to by an archaic name whose closest modern equivalent is 'sleeping kindred'. They will cheerfully wander through small or impermanent settlements (villages, tent cities, camps, etc.) with all the blithe disregard of a man for an ant's nest. Dungeons? Villars really don't like to talk about dungeons, and will change the subject politely but firmly.

Inhabitants? 50% chance occupied, in which case use the OD&D castle table. If you like a bit of gonzo on ya dinner then you might instead want to roll on BBGLF's Space Fantasy Castle Inhabitant Table. If the Villar is vacant then you can always roll up a plot hook on BTBG Al's Random Ruined Buildings Contents table (coz a 100'+ tall walking castle isn't plot hook enough in itself...).



Pic Source: Wayne Barlowe

The Whole Place is Infested with Buggerwumps!

Or, that time when emergent complexity generates more fun than you can eat.

Regular readers will know that I've a tendency to write silly open-ended placeholder names in my wandering monster tables. Case in point, the Masked Sleepers. Another case in point, the mysterious Buggerwump.

Note to the confused. This is a Buggerwump:

Art by Zak S. Name coined by crow. Originated here.

And this is its stat block:

Originated in White Dwarf #009 IIRC.

I don't know what the dice were doing the other night, but almost every time an encounter occurred up it came up as "7: Buggerwump". As the Stair Stalker Buggerwump is, by its very nature, a % in Lair: 100% beastie that meant each one needed a new staircase to lurk on. Me being a simpleminded creature, I assumed that the vast majority of these staircases had to lead somewhere.

Cue a smoke break for the players as I desperately thumbnail in a d12 "Where do these stairs go?" table, then chuck some dice at a page to generate new sub-areas using the Advanced Fighting Fantasy method, and then scrabble for the dungeon stocking table.

Of course, some of the new rooms were stocked with monsters, and - my dice being in full-on trollface mode - a disproportionate number of these rooms were inhabited by, yep, more Buggerwumps. Which meant more staircases. And more rooms. And more...

Before I knew it this one boring little cluster of empty rooms on the way to somewhere else was a mad Escher-channels-Piranesi mazework of scuzzy little sub-areas connected by a stupid number of twisting, overlapping, no-sense-or-logic staircases. The whole section - quickly dubbed The Labyrinth of Countless Stairs ("Of course it was here all along. Look, s'got a name and everything.") - echoed to the high-pitched "Blubalululup" cries of the resident Buggerwumps.

As time went on, the players got a bit weirded out by the situation ("Why are there so many staircases? And why are there nothing but these weird bloopy things living here?"), so they pressed relentlessly on in search of a way out. Of course, their charging from room to room went via the staircases, which provoked attack after attack from the (territorial) Buggerwumps as they went. Their reaction when they finally encountered a ramp leading upwards was just comedy gold ("Not a staircase? I call trap!").

Meanwhile I'm merrily rolling dice for the heck of it, making random "blubalululup" noises, and laughing myself breathless. Some days it's good to be DM.

My point? Not much. I just had a "I know! Right?!" moment about random generation and had to share. If nothing else I'll say thanks to Gorgonmilk Greg for making me look at the Stair Stalker again.

Pic Source: Buggerwump by Zak S. Stair Stalker nicked from Gorgonmilk blog.

AtoZ April - S is for Silver & Syzygy

Day 19, and I would like to cite "silver" (David) and "syzygy" (Erin) as words I never want to think about again.

Silver first I think.

The shiny metal (no lie, that's what Aργυρος meant) is another one of those recurring motifs that keep worming their way into my game from the pool of cultural referents that all gamers bob around in. It's easy to see why; in the ~5-6,000 years that people have been playing with the stuff silver has picked up both a myriad of practical uses and a boatload of associated cultural baggage.

• Silver is cash.
  It's shiny; that makes it covetable. It's durable; that makes it concealable. Silver is the basis of the cash economy in the Vaults game, just as it was historically. Greek drachma, Roman sesterci, pennies, pieces of eight: silver, not gold.
• Silver cures disease.
  Turns out the old folk remedies of putting silver pennies in a jar to ward off diseases had some basis in fact. It's probable that at least one of the active ingredients in potions of healing is powdered silver.
• Silver represents the moon.
  It's the old alchemical 'as above, so below' symbolism and "stands to reason, dunnit" logic. Shiny, white, round; what else is the moon going to be? Supposedly silver was created when moonlight percolated into the earth. In accordance with the "Sure, why not?" attitude of the Vaults game, this is indeed the case. The secret of refining silver into truesilver (aka mithril*) has been lost though, shame that.
• Silver kills weres and demons.
  Lunar symbolism + disease-killing properties + symbolic purity (see also: any and all references to near eastern lunar goddesses, but especially Artemis) = obvious connection in terms of sympathetic magic. I'm thinking of giving silver weapons special properties against the various annoying oozes and molds that infest the underworld. Silver weapons hit taintbeasts for full damage perhaps?
• Silver represents lightning.
  Amulets of Thor, Jove's lightning bolts, Artemis arrows. How early did people realise that silver was a phenomenally good electrical conductor?

* Stronger than steel, lighter than steel, doesn't corrode. What's the betting the "secret dwarvish name" of mithril is titanium?

Enough general musing about silver though. Here's something specific to the Vaults game.

Seraglio of Silver Masques (Level 5-6)

Deep within the madness and savagery of the Vaults lies a half-forgotten haven of elegance, sophistication and glamour. Whether a remnant of the lost culture that created the Vaults, or merely a spontaneous reaction against the barbarism that surrounds them, the inhabitants of the Seraglio have determined that nothing ugly or inelegant will be tolerated in their midst, and that their days will be spent in ever-more elaborate spectacle and ritual.

The Seraglio of Silver Masques is the general name given to an extended series of galleries, halls, theatres, pavilions and chambers interwoven with numerous secret, semi-secret and intermittent areas which sprawl across the fifth and sixth levels of the Vaults. Although particular rooms are often deserted or forgotten for years on end the area as a whole is dominated by the perpetual revels, soirées and events of the Argent Odalisques.

All visitors to the seraglio, whatever their origin, are expected to don symbolic masks and play their appointed role, however absurd and out-of-character it might normally be. The willingness to enter into the games of the Seraglio is the price of admission; the wit and elegance of one's performance is a measure of one's standing. Illusions, deceptions and mistaken identity are the norm, and the prevailing conceit is that no-one knows who anyone else is. Think one of those period dramas set in Venice or Versailles (Chocolat, Ridicule, Dangerous Liaisons, anything with Casanova or Byron in it, etc) if it was illustrated by Druillet.

There is no evidence that the masks proferred to guests in the seraglio have any connection at all to those worn by the Masked Sleepers of the upper Vaults. Nor is there any evidence at all that these delightfully crafted objects d'art steal knowledge from the minds of wearers, or control their will, or alter their faces, or anything else at all like that, at all.

The native cunning, personal power and political connections of the Argent Odalisques ensure that the Seraglio is neutral ground in the violence and chaos of the Vaults. Rest, pleasant conversation, esoteric lore and pleasures unimagined by the unwashed groundlings of the surface world are all available here for the right price, promise or favour. Refusal to play along will get you shunned, ejected and/or turned into a decorative feature.

Inhabitants
The odalisques of the Seraglio are a mixed group of near-humans possessed of ancient power. Each is the egotistical queen of her own petty demesne, emulous and eager for the envy, respect and grudging approval her peers. Unwitting visitors are likely to be treated as pawns in the long-running political games of the seraglio, wily ones may be able to turn their extensive connections to the power blocs within the Vaults to advantage.
In game terms the odalisques should be treated as harpys, lamia, medusae, nymphs, and/or sirens.

The odalisques amuse themselves with a variety of exotic pets (phase tigers, cockatrice, basilisks, giant serpents, etc), playthings and breeding projects (Eloi boytoys, man-bull hybrids, miscegenetic things from the Fiend Folio or the inside of Clive Barker's head), with magical research, and with their endless spectacles, extravaganzas and politicking. Each protects her sanctum as best she sees fit, but there is a commonality in the use of Ogre harem guards, Ogre magi major domos, troll assassin/saboteurs, and Masked Herald messengers (treat as Cloakers, see It Came From The SRD).

GM Note
This is my equivalent of the Drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu from D3 Vault of the Drow. The party can come crashing in like the heavy mob, killing and stealing as they go, but they're liable to take a kicking from the various "Save or [Suck/Lose/Die]" powers of the residents. If they comport themselves with a modicum of grace they might actually be able to turn the intrigues of the Argent Odalisques to their advantage.

-----

And now, syzygy.

Syzygy (the short word version): it's when three celestial bodies line up, or - more rarely - any pair, usually of opposites. The word comes from the Greek for "yoked together".

Solar and lunar eclipses are interesting times in the Wilds. All those celestial bodies pulling on one another means that it's entirely too easy for things to move from one world to another. That's why you don't go poking around those rings of trilithons at symbolically important times; the various conjunctions, transits, occultations and eclipses are when it's entirely too easy to launch yourself into space (by strapping a few cannisters of dew to your belt) and also when horrible alien s**t that poisons sane life with its very presence is most likely to fall from the horror-filled vile moon that flies across the night skies of the Wilds.

All this means that astronomers are people who inspire strong reactions in the populace. Sometimes they're respected as sages, scholars and early-warning devices; other times they're despised as harbingers of doom. ("You predicted it; that means you caused it!" - Nothing quite like the good old unreason of magic thinking, is there?)

-----

Pic Sources
Masked figures by Phillipe Druillet
Syzygy Hangman from Brown Sharpie by Courtney Gibbons

AtoZ April - Q is for Quarrel

Day 20, wherein your humble scribe match wits with the most inscrutable of Scribble tiles.

First an aside.

You know, among all the varieties of Classic D&D it was only BECMI that offered magical arrows/bolts the chance to be anything more than "slaying or '+n', your choice". The D&D Bumper Fun Book offered no less than a score of missile weapon properties (Missile Weapon Talents, pp243-244) with which to garnish your flying wooden sticks of death. There was still one oversight in the list though. Where was the quarrel of quarreling? A simple little one shot gag which causes the target to turn on his allies when it hits (save vs. spell/device negates).

Yes, I know it's a howler...

Waffle aside, on with the content.

Quarrel acrobats, yesterday.

Quarrel [wondrous item]
Individual 1' square panels of glass. Some are found mounted in windows, others shuffled in with job lots of valuable, but otherwise non-magical, glassware. Quarrels detect as magical but are just as fragile as normal glass. Each has a single inherent detection effects usable 1/day be someone attuned to the quarrel.

Sample Quarrel Powers (d12)

1	see invisible
2	see ethereal
3	see kirlian aura
4	as eye of magnification
5	predict weather
6	lens of read languages
7	clairvoyance
8	true seeing
9	as gem of seeing
10	Cavorite effect
11	visual psychometry
12	Cycling phantasmal force illusion of [GMs choice]

Self-Perpetuating Quarrel [creature]
If six quarrels are arranged into a cube and the correct incantations performed (research into the lost art of vitromancy will be required) a glimmering mist fills the box and the quarrel animates. Long, multi-jointed limbs of vitreous-looking ectoplasm coalesce from each of its eight corners. These limbs have immense strength and tireless endurance, but only manifest in the absence of sunlight.

There is a 90% likelihood that the creation will obey verbal orders given by anyone attuned to the individual quarrels that make up its structure. Some self-perpetuating quarrels (the remaining 10%) instead ignore their assemblers and storm off to further an undisclosed agenda.

Self-perpetuating quarrels usually seek to avoid conflict and will skitter away from aggressive opponents at up to 180'/round. If cornered they will hurl heavy objects or swipe at any who pose a threat to them. The pseudopod arms are powerful (attack as 6HD creature for 2d6 damage, 4 attacks/rnd, max 2 per target) and difficult to damage (AC5, require 10 points in a single strike to sever). The stubs of severed limbs will sprout two pseudopods (treat as severing the heads of a lernean hydra) in the following round. The box itself is flat panels of glass, exactly as fragile and vulnerable as that implies. Most attacks will affect the flailing arms and ectoplasmic integument, but a critical hit/natural 20 with a piercing/missile weapon will instantly destroy a quarrel, reducing the creature to shards of glass and a rapidly evaporating mist.

A self-perpetuating quarrel has the general immunity to magic typical of golems. Most spells will simply pass through its translucent form without effect. There are a few notable exceptions to this: any of the mage's hand series of spells allows the caster to control the gross movement, but not the fine manipulations, of the quarrel. Shatter (or a horn of blasting or similar sound-based attack) destroys it instantly. Glass like steel improves the AC of both the glass box and the pseudopod arms to 0. Fire does no damage to these creatures.

The self-perpetuating quarrel cannot communicate verbally, but makes expressive indicative gestures.

-----

Ha! 'Q' ain't so tough without his sidekick 'U' backing him up.

Pic Source
Glass cube by Larry Bell, courtesy of askart.com

AtoZ April - K is for Kibble

Day 11, and I would like it on record that Dave "Sham" Bowman is an evil, evil man whose choice of words hurtses my delicate brain.

"K is for kibble" commandeth the Sham, and lo was my confidence knocked, my crest fallen and my urb entirely purt-ed.
"Kibble" asked I "what is this kibble? Quick! To the dictionaries!"

Kibble is the act of coarsely grinding something such as grain.

Kibble may also refer to:
* Kibble, a component of dog food or cat food, as in Kibbles 'n Bits
* Chris Kibble (born 1963), British jazz musician
* Kibble Palace, a greenhouse in Glasgow
* Tom W. B. Kibble (born 1932), British physicist
* Bucket, as used by a water well
* Large bucket, as used to raise ore from a mine shaft
* Chalk and flint rubble, also known as kibble in East Devon, used to consolidate ground

So, as I know little enough about physics or Glaswegian greenhouses (where weegies isolate vegetables that their food supply might not be tainted by dangerous foreign innovations like vitamins), and nothing at all about jazz , that'll be one post on large buckets in the Vaults coming up.

Specifically industrial-sized buckets on aerial ropeways.

"We're perfectly safe. Just pull on that rope there..."

Delvers who survive their time in the Vaults report infrequently discovering large oak and iron buckets suspended from massive brunellian chains or thick-thick ropes. These curious arrangements are hoisted hither and yon for purposes opaque or forgotten by the massive engines of the Gearworks. Some buckets travel through tunnels, others hurtle across huge open voids in the high vaulted spaces above keyed areas.

Bucketway travel is wildly popular with goblin population of the Vaults. Some take this fascination to a strange extent, giving rise to a caste of so-called 'bucket spotters' dedicated to travelling on and recording all the bucketway routes they can find.

Whereas the Ferris Wheel of Doom is a way of travelling between levels (and worlds if someone presses the wrong button) rapidly and relatively safely, the bucketways of the Vaults are a way of getting from A to B while having the party exposed to all the local colour and nastiness in between. They're in one or more buckets being hoisted through the darkness of the mythic underworld. Any true GM will be rubbing their hands in evil glee at this...

Riding the Bucketway

Each bucket can carry up to 4 human-sized creatures and their carried gear, or up to 6 if they pack in like the occupants of a clown car. Strenuous activity (like dodging or fighting off attackers) makes the bucket sway and tilt wildly. Dex checks to hold on. Being thrown out of the bucket requires saves vs. paralysation to avoid falling out and either being left behind to be clocked by the next bucket to hurtle along (knocked flying, 1d10 damage, save vs breath weapon for half) or plummeting to a horrible squishy doom far, far below.

Appearance
"You happen upon a big bucket that looks like [d10]"

1. ...the lower half of a large transparent hamster ball
2. ...an oversized bowl/cauldron
3. ...a big bucket/tub (1-5 oaken staves, 6 made of some strange brightly coloured flexible material like horn or shaped resin)
4. ...an iron mine cart/skip
5. ...a small boat (1in6 chance swan-headed and winged)
6. ... a metal cage, elevator or cart-mounted (You can’t fall out; can’t jump out without re-opening the door. You did check the lock before you slammed it shut, right?)
7. ... a gigantic open-topped humanoid skull (1in6 chance burning eye socket lamps)
8. ... an inverted giant turtle shell
9. ... a triangular hod (link to pic)
10. ... an excavator scoop (open-fronted, likely designed to tilt)

Detail
The massive chains and tarred hawsers forming the bucketway are generally in good nick, but the buckets themselves show often signs of wear and tear. Roll for as many pieces of dressing as you fancy.

Grody	- 3in6 chance substantial rust/dirt/waste indicating former or current function. Possibly dangerous; definitely unpleasant.
Ooh shiny!	- 2in6 chance object trouve (roll on preferred random dungeon dressing object table)
Rusty POS	- 1in6 chance that the floor, an exterior panel or (if the GM’s in a really playful mood) a supporting member is dangerously rotted or rusted.
Occupado!	- 1in6 chance already occupied (by vermin, ooze, goblins, humanoid toads voiced by David Jason who declare the bucketway "...the only way to travel!", etc.)
Safety First!	- 1in6 chance emergency stop lever (50% lever is purely decorative)
Unbalanced	- 1in6 chance rotates slowly during travel. Especially likely to tilt if weight isn’t distributed evenly.

Where does it go?
Unless guided by a native who already knows the route a randomly encountered bucketway could end up almost anywhere in the Vaults. The direction of the main chain will generally provide some clue, although these can change direction with little warning.

1-3	Lateral	stays on the same level - 2d6 rooms in d8 direction (1 = N, 2 = NE, etc.)
4-5	Vertical	travels +/- 1d3 dungeon levels
6	Inclined	combines Lateral and Vertical, possibly an access route to an otherwise isolated sub-level

Pleasingly Touristic - additional 2in6 chance that the bucketway connects to/crosses one of the major named features of the level.

Tunnel Details
Width of transit tunnel: bucket width + 1d10 feet. If more than 5’ clearance there may be an additional walkway running parallel to the bucketway route.
1in10 chance of some obstruction poking up from the floor (check only once per journey). Not immediately lethal, but likely to keep life interesting.

How do we get off this thing?

1-2	Controlled start/stop	jerky and uncomfortable, but you stop.
3-4	Continual loop	no stopping, possible slowing or change of direction (like a ski lift). Jump!
5-6	Automatic dump	upon reaching a particular point in its journey the bucket tilts in its frame and dumps its contents. Hopefully not into a furnace, grinder or sump.

So please hold tight and keep all extremities, children, halflings and squishy wizards inside the car at all times.

Pic Source
Ropeway pic from Low-tech Magazine

AtoZ April - G is for Geometry

"Fleeing? Fleeing!"

"There's a ghost with a conscience, a bridge full of nonsense.
(incoherent mumbling) Say that again and I'll generalise you!"
-- Dammaki Half-a-Man*

* with apologies to HMHB

Deep in the Vaults are places where the structure of the world itself breaks down. Lacunae in the ordered universe with which only the greediest and most power-hungry would dare tinker. Hushed voices in the bars and dives of Adburg speak of friends and allies lost to such twisted loci as Zeno's Dollhouse, the Chambers of Devouring Night, or the Hall of Blind Windows. Among these places - fearsome even to the jaded treasure seekers who trawl the underworld in search of power and wealth - is ranked the enigmatic Euclidrome.

The aftermath of an abortive attempt to fully integrate the timeless purity of the Astral Realm with the material world, the Euclidrome is a profoundly alien space unsuited for normal human life. It is a place where the Ideal intrudes into the grubby, violent, compromised lives of adventurers, with often irrevocable consequences.

The area of the Vaults around the entrance to the Euclidrome is haunted by a tormented, grieving spirit that attempts to warn people away from the horrors therein. The very presence of this roving spirit gradually morphs its environs from the customary 'monstrous Gothic' of the Vaults into a sleek minimalist aesthetic in smooth and shining white. General rule: if Kevin McLeod would rhapsodise over the area: run away!

The entrance to the Euclidrome proper appears to be a tunnel opening out onto a narrow, rail-less bridge spanning a fathomless chasm (Oooh, Jungian!). The chasm is not a physical space, more a disruption in ordered reality. As such the bridge is infested with gaps, illusions, hallucinatory terrain and distance distortion effects (q.v. spells of the same name in LLAEC). Falling off the bridge drops the poor sucker out of the created world and into the Void Between, likely unprotected, and with their warm, life-filled body glowing like a flare in the hungry darkness. "Bye bye."

Beyond the chasm the prevailing 'monstrous Gothic' masonry of the Vaults is replaced by a smooth white minimalism in all things. Even visitors find themselves becoming sleeker, glossier and more 'airbrushed'. The largely interchangable chambers (the walls of which seem to repel, absorb or otherwise erase directional markings left upon then) each contain a single unique abstract sculpture on a pedastal. The sculptures gradually morph from complex to simple forms and back again over time. What exactly these things do, and whether they can be removed from the Euclidrome, is entirely at the GM's option.

As one travels deeper into the Euclidrome things become ever more abstracted. Unique objects lose their uniqueness and all things are gradually simplified to their platonic forms. The evenly-spaced blue lines that underlie the world become more apparent. Impossible objects and solidified concepts can be found scattered about like disregarded toys and seemingly surruptitious movement can occasionally be seen out of the corner of one's eye.

Rumour has it that those who find the centre of the Euclidrome are abstracted away entirely and irrevocably.

Intruding on Perfection

The Euclidrome is a soft place where the Astral Realm intrudes on the Material plane. Upon entering the Euclidrome the very laws that govern the world become simplified and idealised. In game terms this means pulling out your copy of OD&D and utilising the rules therein for the duration. ;)

• All weapon damage is reduced to d6 damage. Yep, this boosts daggers, darts and the like.
• Bonuses from stats are limited to +1 max.
• Hit advances per the table on p19 of M+M (similar to the LL hit tables).
• All class abilities not listed in Men and Magic are off limits for the duration.
• Casters are limited to spells from the OD&D Men And Magic lists.

To some (e.g. players and GMs of Swords and Wizardry White Box) this may not be a big deal. But I use LL with added -AECisms and a bunch of magpied house rules thrown in. As you might imagine, there were tears before bedtime. ;)

Continue deeper into the area and characters will be gradually abstracted away. As I previously wrote in connection with the Astral Realm:

...long-term visitors may find themselves slowly losing their individuality (keepsakes, memories, quirks of character, etc.) and becoming ever more notional versions of themselves over time.

Attempts to interfere with the warped space at the centre of the Euclidrome without protection of extreme puissance will result in characters being abstracted away entirely and irrevocably. A wish might save you, but restoring a character from abstraction is otherwise all but impossible. It's like trying to restore a picture from a low-resolution, VGA-colour copy: the original data is so degraded there's very little left to restore.

I'm sure that analogy will be of some comfort to the players as they roll 3d6 in order.

Inhabitants of the Euclidrome

Ghost with a Conscience
Sole survivor of the event that created the Eudlidrome.Treat as ghost (LLAEC, p127). It will attempt to use its fear effect and magic jar ability to drive interlopers away from the area without killing them if possible. If defeated through magic or dismissed by clerical turning the ghost will return to its protective role in 1d6 days. It will continue to return so long as the effect maintaining the Euclidrome endures.

Geometric People
Vestiges of the original experimenters who wanted to integrate the Ideal Realm of the Astral with the material world. Undifferentiated, interchangeable and really abstract, the geometric people tend to blur into their environment when not carefully observed. They are opportunistic scavengers which lure interlopers into ambushes in hope of stealing their 'real-ness'.

Stats: as Wights under a permanent duo-dimension effect (see LLAEC). Geometric people seek to steal life energy (1 level per hit), attempt to flee the Euclidrome across the chasm and re-enter the mundane world. Thus far there is no record of any succeeding.

Others
Few other creatures are unable to survive the unusual conditions of the Euclidrome for any length of time. Explorers may encounter some strangely distorted phase tigers, blink dogs and other creatures capable of existing in several planes simultaneously (the reports of survivors typify these unfortunate beings as "sketchy").

JLCC

Treasures of the Euclidrome
Why the hell would anyone enter this deathtrap? Well, where do you think all that highly magical, supremely lucrative reified stuff (like liquid time) comes from? This place should be paydirt for wizards interested in extra-dimensional spaces, planar travel and the like.

Roll (almost) All The Dice: Euclidrome Sculpture Interaction Generator

[error in the RATD:ESIG - the d8 is maligned as being non-Platonic while the d10 gets a pass. I'll settle his snidey decima-faced hash!]

Pic Source
Geometric People from Ptak Science Books blog

AtoZ April - D is for Destiny

Day 4, and there is no fate but what we make ...unless there is.

Charlatans will claim that for silver they can predict your fortune in love; wizards claim to see the future in their shewstones and scrying pools; the votaries of the gods and demon lords claim that their patrons alone shape the destinies of men.  Beyond predictions so vague as to be truisms, so specific as to be useless, or so contrived as to be nonsensical, all are liars.

In the Five Worlds there is no destiny other than what people make for themselves. Of course, as the wise say:

"There is an exception to every rule (including this one)."


"You know how a sundial or waterclock tells you what time it is? Well, them Deus Tines, they tell time what it is. No? Well can you tell me what time is?"
-- Dammaki Half-a-Man, village idiot or visionary seer (opinion is divided) of Adburg

Alone in the desolation of the Nagai Plains stand the Deus Tines: five gigantic metallic spikes furlongs high set in a straight line, but curving at a slight angle from the vertical like upraised tusks. Massive, starkly undecorated and seemingly unaffected by mortal or godly power, these ranked monoliths act as the gnomon of a vastly complex collection of interlocking solar calendars erected around their base.

Several of the shadows cast by the Deus Tines do not appear to conform to the movement of the sun of Nagoh. Crypto-astrologers of the Wilds theorize (endlessly, and with soporific detail) that these shadows are the echoes or conjoined twins of shadows cast by the solar luminaries of Nagoh's sister worlds. None have yet offered a plausible explanation for what exactly is casting the shadow which (supposedly) represents the sunless realm of Ghoan.

The solar intersections of the shadows on the multifarious sigils and symbols carved and erected across the Field of Calendars are supposedly the entire plan for the Five Worlds and all that is attached to them. Popular legend has it that anyone who can interpret the sigils correctly, and modify the shadows cast (even by an expedient as simple as standing on the dial, or placing a stone in the correct place) a means of predicting or modifying the future, or even of subverting that which has already past.

The skuzzy, improvised settlement which has grown up beyond the northern (shadowed) side of the Deus Tines is home to numerous religious sects and ideocults which fight ongoing ideological skirmishes over the right to place markers at - or stand in - certain shadows during crypto-astrologically significant times; over the interpretation of the sigils; over whether knowledge of the future by other than the gods is hubristic and dangerous; and over whether the shadows cast by the Deus Tines actively shape, or merely express in symbolic fashion, the current state and intended future of the Five Worlds. As is so often the case, the more esoteric and abstruse the conjecture; the more vicious the fighting.

Ideocults and Idiot Sects of Shadowside
(representative sample only. Subject to schism, revolt, doctrinal change and/or self-immolation without warning ...or apparent logic)

d12

1. Chronominceurs - badly-dressed wannabe time wizards who just won't shut up. Talk a good fight, but that's it. The vast majority of their 'time relics' have drearily mundane origins.
2. The Brethren of the Unbeheld - cult who believe their god has been imprisoned/unmade in a fold in time; seek to liberate/recreate him. Obvious lunatics, but their leaders get spells from somewhere. Rivals of #6.
3. Retrogressivists - Seek to travel back to a mythical Golden Age; either of the past, or of their own devising; they seem unsure which. Hate #4 like poison.
4. Blessed Enactors of the Restoration - Seek to turn time back to the mythical Golden Age. Vague over how this will affect the passage of time or causality in the past/present/future. Get very angry if you point out that there's no historical record of them succeeding in their endeavour... Hate #3 like poison.
5. Redeemers of the Lost - seek to return dead loved ones (carried like relics in urns, coffins, shrouds, etc) to life. A little too bright-eyed and keen for most people.
6. The Preceptors of Fate - Seek to prevent all interference with the Deus Tines in favour of study and measurement. Especially hate #5, have surprisingly good relations with #10...
7. The Tinebenders - believe their curious rites gradually reshape the Deus Tines, thus restructuring the fate of the world in their favour. Hate #6.
8. The Bentines - People apparently adrift from their 'proper' time and place. Communicate in gnomic non-sequiturs. Sometimes display uncanny predictive abilities, at other times just seem helpless goons. Dislike #2 ...sometimes.
9. Rhonastokers - Acolytes of their living prophet Rhonastok, an orange-faced Hobgoblin who they claim invented time when he came to Nagoh from a distant world. Prone to stoning heretics, dissenters, unbelievers, passing animals, and so on. Seem casually unaffected by the intermittent presence of ghostly conjurings from their addled imaginations... #1 put them on edge.
10. Horologeisten - Apostate monks who consider the Deus Tines nothing but a dangerous distraction from the contemplation of True Time. Appear to mimic the abilities of phase tigers. Hate #9, sundials and waterclocks with a cold passion.
11. Eschatists - Nihilists who want it over with. All of it. Forever. Study the Deus Tines to find the secret of bringing about the eschaton as soon as possible. Surprisingly cheerful when off the clock. Hate #12.
12. Covey of the Jade Hag - Seek to bring about the triumph of Law by establishing the Primacy of Universal Time (yeah, they pronounce the caps) over the Five Worlds. Really mean, with a nasty habit of immolating captured heretics to death under large solar lenses. Really annoyed by #8.

Treat the ideocults and sectaries as nomads or berserks led by all sorts of unusual leaders. Use the NPC Reaction Table and the Castle Encounter Tables individually for each group to see how they react to any intrusion by nosey PCs into 'their' patch.

JOESKY'S LAW Compliance Content:

Liquid Time [Magic Item - Potion/Artefact]
A transparent glutinous fluid with a slight rainbow tinge at its edges. Very difficult to sever into pieces (some speculate that all samples of liquid time are just aspects or temporal 'shapshots' of a unity). Very, very difficult to store; it tends to flow to a when that the container wasn't there. Nearly priceless to people who know what they're doing with it. Insanely dangerous to those who don't.

[Want a truly universal alkahest? Want a material component for a resurrection effect, or a time machine, or a truly unbreakable prison? Want an "I wish none of this had happened" undo button? Want to make the DM cry by putting it in the Universal Combiner? You get the idea.]

AtoZ April - B is for Broth

Day 2 of the challenge. The distant cries of "Tekelili! A... B... C..." grow ever louder and more annoying...

B is for Broth

Some non-typical stuff. I did think of doing a random Goblin Stew table, or a soup golem, or riffing on the stone soup fairy tale. But nah...

Broth of Oblivion
Deep in the Vaults of Nagoh, although no one has reliably established exactly how deep, lies a long-deserted and shunned antechamber to the sealed area known as the Hundred-Fold Hells of Expiation.

The walls of this large galleried chamber are decorated with elaborate bas-reliefs in a stylised, almost Egyptian, artistic style. They appear to show the funerary practises of a long-forgotten society or sect.

The dominating features of the chamber are two-fold.  The first is an everfull font (or possibly a turreen) of oily fluid held aloft by massively sculpted inhuman figures. The second is a monstrous stone wheel mounted vertically on a raised dais. Verdigrised bronze shackles are attached to the wheel, which spins as if well-oiled at even the lightest touch.

"Sure, I'll take a drink. What could possibly go wrong..."

Broth of Oblivion - drinking it wipes memory (as feeblemind spell).
Wheel of Transmigration - If a dead, undead or feebleminded creature is strapped into the wheel: treat as reincarnate spell. If used by a living, non-feebleminded creature: 25% chance of death (along with horrible screaming, torn flesh and smoking eye-sockets), 50% chance lasting insanity (treat as permanent confusion effect), 25% chance of recieving some distorted vision from a previous or future life.

[Yeah. Its basically a Raggian Green Devil Face based on a Toaist myth]

The Gloop Sea

Far away in the southernmost stony deserts of the Wilds lies the strange result of an ancient magical accident committed by ancient twin sorcerers remembered in folklore as The Myanicux. It is believed the Myanicux intended to banish hunger from the world forever; instead they destroyed both their own intertwined towers and ultimately their entire homeland, all of which now lie buried beneath their infamous gooey legacy. The lasting symbol of their ancient error is a broad expanse of gloopy water heavily polluted with decomposing organic material.

To those rare creatures able to stomach its disease-infested, peculiar-smelling waters the Gloop Sea is a rich source of nourishment. Warped leviathans and schools of what may once have been either fish (or possibly land-bound herd animals) swim in its nutritious depths, perpetually feeding and growing, they in their turn are perpetually fed upon by exotic micro-ecologies of lesser entities.

The dour half-human race known as the Gloopsiders (less familiarly known as Myanicuxii or as The Expectant Apostles of the Egg) eke out a scanty living harvesting the shallows of this strange sea. Sexes are strictly segregated in dress and social role. The womenfolk flatly refuse to speak to outsiders, and spend their days paddling in clumsy round-hulled scows to harvest the bizarre bounty of the shoreline reefs and shoals. The whistles and hoots they use to communicate between boats are often wafted ashore by the fitful breezes of the Gloop Sea. The men of the tribes remain ashore, variously carving their strange statues, dragging the excess of their women’s catches to the nearest trading post, or (when all the women are absent) sitting about engaged in those universal masculine pastimes: drinking, gambling and bragging.

 Gloopsider women braving the gloilpy tides and gurgling eddies of the Gloop Sea

The Gloopsiders pray unceasingly for a prophesied event they call The Descent of the Cosmic Egg. Their fatalistic religion holds that this event will herald first the draining away of the Gloop Sea and then, in the subsequent Great Scouring, the wiping away and consumption of all unrighteous (i.e. non-Gloopsider) life. So thankless are their lives that many Gloopsiders look forward to this coming apocalypse with a morbid avidity, carving worryingly elaborate statuary of their personal visions of the long-anticipated horrible deaths of everyone else.

Natural Hazards of the Gloop Sea

Quite apart from the traditional hazards to navigation (storms, tides, rocks, etc.) and the elaborate ecosystem of unique diseases, parasites, macro-protozoans (oozes) and bizarre aquatic lifeforms that have evolved in this ideal - well, ideal for them – environment, the Gloop Sea has its own strange tides and hazards to navigation.

1. "Flub" - methane bubbles erupt from deep beneath the surface. Gas effect, danger of explosion. 50% chance gas has a strange effect on normal life (causing "Marie Celeste" syndrome or the like)
2. "Bloilp" - Single large bubble (1d6x5ft diameter) of pressurised gas erupts 0-90ft from the travellers. May rock or tip small boats.
3. "Pwook" - The implosion of a vast bubble, or possibly just some random tidal effect, cause vicious waves to lash the area. Ships may be capsized; shore side settlement may find themselves afflicted by tsunami of gloop.
4. "Scluck" - Sargasso of organic matter. Rate of travel slowed substantially.
5. "Slurp!" - whirlpool caused by the feeding of one of the larger, deeper-swimming natives.  Causes hull Point damage, may suck down unlucky vessels.
6. "Pfuuuurb" - parting of the Gloop Sea. Massive upheavals in the depths open a deep rift in the surface of the water. This endures for 1d6 hours and has a 50% chance of revealing some long-inundated ruin, vehicle or other find.

Pic Sources
Silver porringer from chestofbooks.com
The Jumblies from Project Guttenburg

The Universal Combiner

A simple enough trick I'm going to add into an as yet unexplored section of the Gearworks (level 3 of the Vaults).

Like this, only minus wheels, plus hoodoo

This immense, room-sized mechanism has two input hoppers at one end (each large enough to take something 2' x2' in size), a bunch of Willy Wonka odd-tech pistons, gauges, levers and gears on its body, and a large output hopper at the other.  Simply put any two things in the input hopper, pull the lever and stand well back. The selected objects will be slowly, inexorably drawn into the machine, exiting the output hopper irrevocably fused into one. Whether the new object is usable, and to what end, is entirely dependent upon the whim of the GM and the ingenuity of the players.

The racket of the machine's operation requires a wandering monster check.

Putting a living thing through the machine? I'd say a save vs. death (or perhaps "vs polymorph" is more fitting?) to come out relatively unharmed. Well, apart from their bizarre new appendage and a lasting grudge against the person who pushed them in*... Failed save: they're a mangled wreck of meat and organs.

* What? You thought the sullen-faced winged baby-head gargoyles were just a decorative feature?

Simple enough then. That is until your players get cocky and start dumping things like corpses, henchmen, magic items, the odd magical substances of a fantasy world (solid shadows, reified memory/sorrow/true love, etc.), and/or clever-clogs dichotomous oddnesses (a living being in one hopper; an undead in the other) into the machine. The cleverness and inquiring natures of such players should be rewarded in the customary manner (I believe "worlds of hurt" is the operative phrase).

Of course, if there's a universal combining machine, it stands to (un)reason that somewhere in the Vaults there's also a universal divider/renderer/refiner of some kind...

(I'm certain I've nicked this from someone, but for the life of me I don't know who. Any help with attribution appreciated.)


Pic Source
Victorian thresher from fotolibra.com

Rubblecrawl? Ruincrawl? *crawl, in a dead city.

"Yep. Looks like a massive 'X marks the spot' to me."

Inspired in part by Zak's excellent urbancrawl ideas, here are a few half-formed thoughts on a quick ruined city generator.

[note: This is a work in progress piece. I'll probably be tinkering with it and adding more stuff as it occurs to me]

Draw a flow chart of interesting, lootable places in your city (in the case of my own Ruined City of Nagoh this would include such cheesy soubriqued sites as the Toppled Colossus, the Intermittent Tower, the Electric Eye, the Ruined Palace, the Verdant Ziggurat, the Grand Gate, the Necropolis of Certain and Horrific Death, the Valley of the Wang, etc).

Make each such ‘tourist attraction’ the focal point of its own neighbourhood/ward, then arrange them in kind of a spider-web looking diagram of how everything relates together.  Don't draw out every street or building, because that’s simply not important. Oh, and don’t forget to merrily cut some geographically nearer locations off from easy access, simply because you are a GM and being a difficult bastard is your calling and vocation.  ("You can get there, if you swing past the harpy-infested Throne-Temple of the Triple Goddess.  Can’t go directly, unless you fancy running the gauntlet through the Ghoultracts, then climbing the Sanguine Cliffs into the upper city while the Hivers bombard you with rocks...")

Getting from A to B
Sure, you could just decree that there are vast unobstructed Parisian boulevards between the major attractions, but how dull is that?  Far more fun to make the PCs slog their way through furlongs of devastated, overgrown ruinscape on their way to wherever they’ve decided to Greyhawk first.  Try and get the music from the early scenes of Wall-E gets stuck in their heads...

Make an encounter table of things that could happen on the way to the next major landmark.  Either a simple big table, or a convoluted series of same, as you prefer.  Add trap/trick/terrain hazard stuff like:

• Looters (not upstanding scholars of the past like our heroes)
• Wandering monsters
• Small lairs/shanties
• Avenues of foreboding statues
• Fallen buildings blocking the path
• Overgrown gardens/parks
• Flooded decorative pools/fountains
• Massive sinkholes into the sewers/undercity
• Magical effects gone bad over time
  
• Inexplicable Wacky Crap [I like the Wilderlands of High Sorcery tables and/or BTBG’s Random Ruins]

Whether you elect to roll for random events/encounters/complication per turn (as in a dungeon), or per exploration turn (4 hours – after MF), or per hour, or every time the players say a particular word, is entirely your business.

Detours Along the Way
If the party decide to nose around in ruined buildings then use the tables below to work out what the hell they used to be, and if there’s anything entertaining/lucrative still in there.  Roll or pick for Function, Layout and Style, Structural Features, Condition, Contents:

Function
What was this place? Choose, or consult the random building table in your preferred city sourcebook.

~Civic~
Temple/shrine
Monument/mausoleum
Museum/library
Basilica/council law/courts
Exchange/bank
Theatre/auditorium/arena
Aviary/menagerie
Guildhall/office/embassy
Hospital/mortuary
Hospice/lazar house
Guard post/barracks

~Commercial~
Shop, merchant*
Shop, craftsman*
Shopping Arcade
Inn/tavern/caravanserai
Slaughterhouse
Masons/builders yard
Warehouse

* See list of example trades and services at the end of this article.

~Residential~
Hovel
Slave Pens
Dormitory
Insula/Tenement
Town house
Urban estate

Layout and Style (choose, then d8)
What does this place look like? Pick a letter or random syllable (jab your finger into a block of text or something...). The shapes of the letters, flipped and mashed together however you choose, define the general floor plan of the building. Rationalised rectilinear blocks? Sooooo 20th century.

Block off rooms, corridors, passages, staircases and such based on function, or as you see fit. This can end up with such apparent incongruities as a big old multi-floored palace divided up into loads of tiny, awkwardly-shaped rooms, blind staircases and voids. But there's nothing to say that this wasn't either: 1) intentional on the part of the designer (architects are nigh-on mad wizardly raving egotists at the best of times), or 2) a building repurposed halfway through its working life by a bunch of guys lacking access to the original blueprints.

(This section is partially urbancrawl's 'numbers as roads' idea, partially leximorph mapping as popularised by John of Nine-and-Thirty Kingdoms. Why re-invent the wheel?)

What architectural form does the building take within the footprint established? Roll d8:

1 Tower house (1d4+3 floors)
2 Insula/Block (1d6+4 floors)
3 Courtyard building (1d3 floors)
4 Terrace (1d3 floors)
5 Hall/Longhouse (1d2 floors)
6 Gable End building (1d4+3 floors)
7 Kraal/Ringhouse (1d3 floors)
8 Other

Structural Features (d8)
1 Balconies
2 Garrets
3 Turret/Belfry
4 Fortified ground floor
5 Overhanging upper floors
6 Colonnades
7 Atrium/Impluvium Pool
8 Other

Sub-basement?
50% 1-2 levels
1in6 chance dungeon/sewer/tunnel entryway

Condition (d6)
Is it still standing, and does it look safe? Or is heading in there tantamount to signing your own death warrant?

1 - Rubble (3in6 unstable)
2 - Dangerous Ruin (risk of cave-ins, possibility of deliberate traps)
3-5 - Ruin
6 - Partial Ruin (3in6 occupied)

• Floor cave in: risk of collapsing floor 2in6, take 2d6 damage and make 2in6 chance again.  Yes, this can lead to a cascade effect...
• Wall/roof cave-in: 2in6, [1d6]d6 as it caves in, save for half.  2in6 chance of any remaining roof collapsing if a wall goes.
• Rubble-slide: 2in6 chance, 2d6 damage (save for half)

So, yeah, pack a sacrificial dwarf or two to check the quality of the stonework.

Contents (d6)
"Little pigs, little pigs. We've come to nick yer stereo." -- Dog Soldiers

1 Monster
2 Monster + loot
3-5 Empty
6 Empty (3in6 hidden/unusual feature)

Bear in mind that most of the original movables, fixtures, and fittings will have been looted or rotted away over time.

Backstreets/Alleys/Slums
If the party decide to head deeper into the ruins, away from all the big, shiny feature you've spent hours detailing, they're probably going to end up in the remains of the low-rent areas that all cities try and airbrush away. Assume these are present by the hectare, and that they've got even more run-down and desolate than the rest of the city.

If you want, you can use them as 'rough terrain' to get the party moving in the direction you desire. Heading into uncharted, organically-developed slums should be tantamount to asking the GM to roll extra 'Getting Lost' rolls, just as if the party were out in the wilderness.  Either use a random dungeon generator or some urban geomorphs (the old Lankhmar, City of Adventure book had some ones). Do they want to risk climbing a building to get their bearings?

Example Trades and Services
(reproduced from Noonan & Wyatt - "Building a City")
A list of trades found in cities. Reproduced here because I have no intention of reinventing a well-researched wheel.

~Trades, Exotic~
Alchemist, art dealer, calligrapher, costumer, imported goods dealer, magic armour dealer, magic item dealer (general), magic weapon dealer, pet merchant, potion dealer, rare wood merchant, scroll merchant, soap maker, spice merchant, trapmaker, wand merchant.

~Trades, Upscale~
Antique dealer, bookbinder, bookseller, candy maker, clockmaker, cosmetics dealer, curio dealer, dice maker, distiller, fine clothier, gemcutter, glassblower, glazier, goldsmith, inkmaker, jeweller, map seller, papermaker, perfumer, pewterer, sculptor, sealmaker, silversmith, slave trader, toymaker, trinkets purveyor, vintner, wiresmith.

~Trades, Average~
Armourer, baker, bazaar merchant, blacksmith, bonecarver, bowyer, brewer, butcher, carpenter, carpet maker, cartwright, chandler, cheesemaker, cobbler, cooper, coppersmith, dairy merchant, fletcher, florist, furniture maker, furrier, grocer, haberdasher, hardware seller, herbalist, joiner, lampmaker, locksmith, mason, merchant, music dealer, outfitter, potter, provisioner, religious items dealer, roofer, ropemaker, saddler, sailmaker, seamstress, shipwright, stonecutter, tailor, tapestry maker, taxidermist, thatcher, tilemaker, tinker, weaponsmith, weaver, wheelwright, whipmaker, wigmaker, woodworker.

~Trades, Poor~
Bait & tackle dealer, basketweaver, brickmaker, broom maker, candlemaker, charcoal burner, dyer, firewood seller, fishmonger, fuller, leatherworker, livestock handler, lumberer, miller, netmaker, tanner.

~Services, Upscale~
Animal trainer, apothecary, architect, assassin, banker, barrister, bounty hunter, cartographer, dentist, engraver, illuminator, kennel master, masseur, mewskeeper, moneychanger, sage, scribe, spellcaster for hire, tutor.

~Services, Average~
Auctioneer, barber, bookkeeper, brothel owner, clerk, engineer, fortuneteller, freight shipper, guide, healer, horse trainer, interpreter, laundress, messenger, minstrel, navigator, painter, physician, public bath owner, sharpener, stable owner, tattooer, undertaker, veterinarian.

~Services, Poor~
Acrobat, actor, boater, buffoon, building painter, burglar, carter, fence, gambling hall owner, juggler, laborer, limner, linkboy, moneylender, nursemaid, pawnshop, porter, ship painter, teamster, warehouse owner.

Sources
S John Ross - Medieval Demographics Made Easy
Noonan & Wyatt - Building a City (DMG 3E web supplement)
Legoman of the GITP forums for his instant city builder method

Lost Empires of Faerun by WOTC
Lankhmar, City of Adventure by TSR
Warhammer City of Chaos by Games Workshop
Pathfinder: Spires of Xin-Shalast (Rise of the Runelords #6) by Paizo

Pic Source
Wayne Barlowe

The Gughul

The Gughul is a bloated oracle, neither demon, god or thing of this world, (in)famous for consuming memories in exchange for its gnomic utterances. It can reveal and open pathways to previously unknown (but not sealed) areas of the Vaults; but in doing so has a tendency to send you 'off down the rabbit hole' without warning.

"Describe to you the route to the Chamber of the Sleeping Prince of All Worlds? Of course I can my dear. And I ask only the merest trifle in return; a bagatelle that a person of your broad and varied experience will make up in no time..."

Knowledge consumed by the Gughul will be entirely lost from the mind of the supplicant. They simply and entirely lose the ability to know that thing ever again. Whether there is any way of recovering these memories, and what that cost of so doing will be, is entirely at the DM's option.

The price in knowledge asked of the petitioner by the Gughul will increase with the importance or relative urgency of the question asked. It will almost unerringly know the appropriate quid pro quo, as over the centuries of its existence the the creature has developed ways of gathering dirt on everyone. The Gughul likely already knows all about any character who visits it, even about the life histories of the rootless existential amnesiacs so commonly drawn to the adventurer's trade.

Unique objects (the first/last/only of their kind) will sometimes accepted (or stipulated) as an alternate form of payment. What a being as ageless and alien as the Gughul wants with such things as "the childhood doll of the last princess of (blah, blah, blah)" is an open question. It probably just enjoys watching people jump through the hoops of its various quixotic requirements. Probably...

The Gughul exists in a state of self-described infallibility. It never admits error, never apologises, and never explains.The quickest way to anger it (and have it offer up info for free to one's personal nemesis) is to have the bad manners to call it on the accuracy of its' information. It is positively affected by flattery and flirting, but not to the point of forgetting its own interests.

Served by? A strange cult-collective of Pod People (pale-green vegetable men grown in the Gughul's subterranean servitor farms).

Stats? Powerful enough to make a mid-level party think "parley?" before "stab it!", but not a bullet-proof DMPC.
Voice? A high-pitched falsetto, likely in an upper class English accent.

I'll probably stick this horror somewhere in the lower reaches of the Vaults. Maybe in the Seraglio of Silver Masques.

(Inspired by Ningauble and Sheelba of Lankhmar fame, the weird monk of the god of forgotten things in China Mieville's Iron Council, and by the useless opacity of Google's 'Help' pages.)

Image copyright Miles Tevez

Arthurian Cinematic Orthodoxy, a Dissenting View

(hat-tip to Brian, landlord of The Frothy Friar)

A certain section of the blogoweb consider John Boorman's 1981 film Excalibur to be the quintessence of Arthurian cinema. People who misguidedly subscribe to this school of thought have obviously never seen the Richard Thorpe's 1953 epic Knights of the Round Table (starring Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Mel Ferrer, and Stanley Baker (Lt. Chard from "Zulu") as Mordred).



Richard Thorpe's showcasing of Technicolour tabbards and classically trained actors > Boorman's love letter to chrome and Vaselined lenses.

And that's all I have to say on the matter... other than:



(second-best Arthur film ever)

Allegories, Orcs and the Wyrdhawk Factor

(this post has been percolating for a while, but it took Trey's interesting take on the psychology of the Orc to push me into posting it)

I, with Tolkers, cordially hate allegory. For what it's worth I think allegory as a literary device is the last resort of the tub-thumping hack. With the honourable exception of the creations of Jonathan Swift (identifying quote: "Fuuuuuuuuu-!"); Christian of Pilgrim's Progress, Talking Lion Jesus, John Galt, and their two-dimensional, placeholding ilk can all take a hike across a minefield.

The one thing I do like about allegory - at least as presented in that old fantasy standby of the medieval bestiary - is the sheer stonebonking mentalism of the associations made. Why exactly the horns of the Yale swivel independently in their sockets (and what the allegorical connotations thereof are) escapes me, but I like it. I also like the idea of talking, proverbially sharp-eyed lynxes with precious kidney stones; the scatalogical whimsy of the bonnacon, which covered the nearest seven acres in flaming excrement as a defence mechanism; and the audacity of using pelicans - in reality little more than particularly stupid and gluttonous seagulls - as symbolic placeholders for The Passion (and/or self-sacrificing love in general). Those are the kind of associations and twisted leaps of logic audacious enough to cause the absurdity of allegory to undergo phase-change into brilliance.

Similarly in medieval iconography, the various ogres, fairies and so forth all had allegorical connotations. When shorn of their whimsical and/or hagiographic elements the goblins, trolls, etc. all represented the unchristianised Other; weird magical people upon whom it was safe to project all faults, vices and chaotic willfulness that good people weren't supposed to have.

(Usually these stories started out as pagan holdover tales, with a side order of half-remembered historical genocide. No, really. The old British folktale entitled "The Last Pict" is quite overt about it, but any western folkloric story about the 'people under the hill' or 'the fair folk' or 'sea brides' or 'changeling children' probably has roots in tribal petty genocide, and the accompanying theft and acculturation of the surviving young.)

Felipe Fernandez-Arnesto in Millennium: A History of Our Last Thousand Years talked about The Wildman, or Woodwose, being the quintessential enemy of the chivalrous knight, even more so than that other allegorical favourite, the dragon. The dragon represented the devil, but the woodwose (ancient relations of the Woosies illustrated by Tom Fitzgerald and so characterfully described by JOESKY) represented the more immediate and personal threat of human-inflicted chaos. The 'wild man' in all his guises was really no more than the heathen of the forest: untamed, unshaven, unshriven.

"Woodwose LOEV heraldry!"

What's the nearest equivalent of the unrelievedly black hat "behave or the bogeyman will eat you!" wildman in classic D&D? Yep. The Orc.

Orcs. Is there anything that can be said about the 1HD wonders that hasn't already? Probably not, but I'm going to work over that particular well-worn chew toy one more time, just to see if there's any squeak left in it.

Still ploughing the folklore furrow, E.G.Palmer of Old Guard Gaming Accoutrements blog has talked about something he calls Wyrd Greyhawk; basically a fantasy setting where that all the crazy folklore, Forteana and old wives tales (spontaneous generation, foetal impressionability, "If you do that too much your face will stay that way!") are true. This is an idea that I find compelling in that it allows characterful, if odd, echoes of real world superstitions to add verisimilitude to the game world, while leaving me enough wiggle room to pick and choose exactly/which myths are true.

So, allegory, wildmen, folk genetics and pig snouts. Let's throw this lot on the poor unsuspecting Orc and see what sticks...

My current take on Orcs is largely as an extension of my (previously looted) take on the Orcish Atavism. IMG Orcs aren't rowdy, dim WFRP hooligans, nor are they WowCraft's proud warrior race guys, nor are they the tragic ruins resulting from a Tolkienian evil overlord's twisting of kidnapped Elves into a slave race. Instead they're the direct result of appetite run rampant. Orcs are the degenerated remains of what bandits and mercenaries become if they revel too much in the rape and slaughter of the sack. These creatures, once human, have been intimately and indelibly marked by the Chaos they themselves have inflicted on the world.

I'm not saying anyone who kills, or overindulges in his favourite vice, is going to turn into an Orc. What would be the good of adventuring, or having carousing rules, if that were the case? But that one guy who keeps finding excuses to commit [insert atrocity here], he'll slowly degenerate into an Orc, his physiognomy gradually twisting, physique slowly bloating, and behaviour coarsening to reflect his inner degradation.

Why do Orcs raid, sack and (*ahem*) sire half-orcs on their unwilling captives? Because:

1. that's what made them Orcs in the first place, and
2. they enjoy it entirely too much to quit.

Peaceful, honourable Orcs? Impossible by definition: they're simply not made that way.

All this may make Orcs a little too "evil <==> ugly" for some tastes. But evil, inbred pig-faced hillbillies (and their degenerated pets/livestock/sexual playthings) who positively *thrive* on being vile and "...needed killing, yer honour" work for me.

Disclaimer: None of my conception of Orcs is a new idea. Tolkers suggested the idea of Orcs as corrupted Elves, and Orwell famously wrote in Animal Farm that:

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

My musings on Orcs as avatars of wrath, lust and gluttony run amok are intended as a nod to such things, and to the visceral - if unjust - loathing of pigs expressed in such authors as William H. Hodgson (in his Carnacki story The Hog) and Clive Barker (the Lord of the Flies meets Scum horror of Pig Blood Blues). The further similarity to the rape-frenzied Broo of RuneQuest, or to the Beastmen of WFRP, is - in retrospect - no coincidence.

Gone are Orcs as overfamiliar, pig-faced punchbags from Central Casting. In their place we have the wages of sin and the real monsters that emerge therefrom.

The Five Worlds - Cosmowaffle and Stock Table Abuse

Riffing a little on Netherworks fascinating thought on planes as chakras (I grossly simplify the conception, probably doing it a great injustice) and Michael Moorcock's idea of more accessible 'local clusters' within wider multiverses (5+10 planes in the Corum stories, 6 in "Phoenix in the Sword", etc.), I've decided to hash together a brief overview of the Five Worlds of Nagoh, and the inter-planar connective tissue that binds them together.

Although seemingly at odds with my willful insistence on canon doubt and uncertainty in the Nagoh setting everything here is subject to revision and replacement at any time; it's simply what works for the purposes of the game at the moment.

This is what D&D canon fiends would call a 'non standard cosmology', but what the OSR would call "so-and-so's nutty take on things".

The Five Worlds

The five worlds - Nagoh and its four sibling realms - move into conjunction and opposition with one another over the ages. These celestial pavanes affect the worlds in a manner that sages and astrologers will happily blather on about until your eyes glaze and you lose the will to live. But what it boils down to is that over the centuries each world causes shift in local zeitgeist as they move in and out of proximity/association/accord to their neighbours. Successive conjunctions and oppositions may help bring about golden age of inquiry, age of horrors, an epoch of retrogressive chaos, a heroic age, and so forth on a neighbour world. These epochal shifts in alignment also cause bizarre tidal effects in the Void Between (how a void can have tides, or anything analogous to them, is another matter entirely...).

Name	Setting	Illumination	Pop Culture Referrent
Nagoh	dark age/medieval	heliocentric	Erm... D&D
Ghoan	far future	dark world	Nightlands - W.H.Hodgson
Hgona	primitive	tidal locked	Hothouse - Brian Aldiss
Aghon	baroque	lunar	Agone RPG
Onagh	classical	cometary	Imajica - Clive Barker

Nagoh: "[B]etween the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of…". Nagoh is pretty much your standard fantasy setting, albeit one with only the haziest claim to any coherent cosmology. 'Home' to the PCs, and in its explored regions not dissimilar to the world of Green Lantern: Mosaic (hat tip: The Burnt Selena Project).

(note: Everything mapped and explored so far is in the central brown bit of the map linked above. I wouldn't want to be the one to beard an Any Median Ian of Wars in its lair. ;) )

Ghoan: A desolate wasteland illuminated only by the faint light of ancient, dying stars. The strange peoples of Ghoan scratch a living from the wrack of their former greatness and fight a losing rearguard action against the twin menaces of planetary heat death and nihilistic heritor races of the darkness.

Hgona: A vibrant tidally-locked Eden. The perpetual Mother of Storms whirls at the noontide zenith of the world, forever calving wild typhoons and monsoon rains to plague the verdant jungles of the Sunlit Lands. The great ring of the cool, long-shadowed Twilit Realms girdles the waist of the world. Nightside is a place of eternal cold and darkness, inhabited by strange and baleful creatures of the outer dark.

Aghon: This perpetually moonlit world of silver foliage and crystalline palaces is ruled by a complex network of mutually emulous fairy courts. Elaborate etiquette and complex, seemingly nonsensical geases rule all social interactions here.

Onagh: A comet-lit world of blazing dawns, bright days, and long, lingering twilights. Onagh is home to a number of sophisticated societies, vast and ancient cities in the full flower of their glory, and to innumerable ideological, political and social quarrels.

There is constant fringe philosophical speculation about the existence of a Sixth World, but no verifiable proof of such, positive or negative.

The Ethereal Margins

The shallows of the Void Between (q.v.). This is the out-of-phase state you slip into when you dimension door, blink, teleport, have floaty out-of-body experiences, and suchlike. It's also where the intangible bulk of the mountains whose peaks make up all those trendy floating islands lurk. The souls of the dead persist for a while (allowing speak with dead and haunting antics), but gradually fade away to... Well, who knows where. Anyone who does isn't telling.

The Void Between

The metaphysical deep ocean between the Five Worlds, and the surest route between them. Inhabited by weird things that - in the words of the Blessed Pratchett - want to break through and enter the material world, with much the effect of an ocean trying to warm itself round a candle. This is where swords-and-sorcery elder demons lurk, whispering madness and blasphemies. Only lunatics travel through this realm of their own free will.

Travel in the Void Between is fraught with peril. It's tantamount to swimming through shark-infested waters wearing a swimsuit made of bloody meat. Various abjuring incantation can protect against the residents attracted by the delicious psychic scent of material life, but these are not infallible. Entropy is greatly accelerated in the void. Things corrode, rot and weaken rapidly if unprotected; flesh exposed to the Void Between dessicates and dry freezes almost instantly. It's generally considered wise to have some form of life-sustaining protection (either powerful magic, or a big, tough voidship) when travelling.

Navigating the Void Between is as fraught an experience as surviving it, similar to trying to fix one's position without instruments in the midst of a ferocious storm. A journey through the Void Between, even with a suitably experienced navigator and bound native guide, requires a number of transitions (think the plane-shifting in Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber here) between relatively fixed locations (standing vortices and eddies, cold matter clumps, nexus crystals, etc.).

A typical voyage between worlds requires d6 checks on the table below:

1. Monster*/Hazard**
2. Monster + Treasure***
3-5. Empty
6. Apparently Empty, 50% chance vortex to Pocket Universe****:
-- 1. Empty
-- 2. Trapped, Empty
-- 3-4. Treasure
-- 5-6. Trap and Treasure

* Use monster generator of choice (Carcosa, Random Esoteric Creature Generator, etc.) or create your own horrors. I'm leaning towards a typical encounter in the Void Beyond being about 4d8 HD divided equally between 1d6 creatures, each with 1d4 special abilities replicating spells of level 1d6+3.
** Select nautical hazard of your choice. Multiply it by the risks of sailing through a demon-infested realm with limited visibility, which is slowly eroding your material form.
*** As Sham's OD&D Treasure Tables, or per your preferred retro-clone. Suggested dungeon level 1d8+4. Content should tend away from gold and bling, and towards weird stuff. These caches should be squirreled away in nexus crystals, cold matter agglomerations, sarrgasoed galleons/submarines/saucers/etc.
**** Pocket Universe traps should generally be Star Trek: TNG-style puzzle worlds. You have to engage with the world and solve it to escape; brute-forcing the situation shouldn't be a viable option. The BECMI module Talons of Night might be considered good source material here.

(note: Yes, the above was a shameless rip-off of the OD&D dungeon stocking table. I'm just seeing if there's a way to extend the utility of that little beauty further...)

The Astral Realm

The astral spell (and similar invocations) remove the caster from the physical realm of the Five Worlds and move him into the rarefied Astral Realm, the domain of dreams, ideas and ideals. Circular time, subjective gravity, thought as motive force, and mind over matter are the norm here. Inhabitants of the Astral Realm are often strangely abstract or allegorical in nature, and long-term visitors may find themselves slowly losing their individuality (keepsakes, memories, quirks of character, etc.) and becoming ever more notional versions of themselves over time. Simpleminded humans tend to go completely mad if they think too hard about how profoundly different the Astral Realm is to the concrete world they know. Those more used to altered states of consciousness, or to thinking in multiple dimensions, tend to cope better.

You can meet the gods in the Astral Realm, but gods in this place are little more than self-perpetuating, vastly powerful archetypal patterns. For most mortals (those below 10th level, and who haven't made some unholy pact for power) this transcendent experience would be akin to trying to establish contact with an incredibly narcissistic natural disaster. Abnormally powerful mortals - who tend to have dedicated themselves to the single-minded pursuit of a particular ideal or philosophy - actually take on something of this 'divine monomania' while in the Astral Realm.

(note: I (barely) resisted the urge to go the whole Dreamtime hog and create a wacky pastiche realm of Astralia, complete with slouch hat-wearing Githyanki larrikins and marsupial kaiju, instead going for a RuneQuest-ish 'realm of ideals'-meets-Godland take on things.)

Elemental Planes

There are no elemental planes in this cosmology. Almost by definition elementals are creatures of the material world, so that's where they come from (and generally stay). Elementals can be summoned in any of the Five Worlds, but not in the Ethereal Margins, nor in the Void Between, the Pocket Universes, or the Astral Realm. There simply isn't enough material matter in these places for elementals to arise.

This gives me a little more structure than the "yeah, why not?" omnivorousness of the Ferris Wheel of Doom, but still lets me play fast and loose with plane-hopping stuff, alternate worlds, hostile outer darknesses, ghostly hippy space, and the like.

(art credit: Maelstrom section 19 by Ian Miller)

Mouldering in the Darkness

Everything rots. Everything gradually breaks down into uselessness. This is simply a law of nature. In the context of dungeoncrawling this is super-important, in that all that stuff you're after (precious metals, scrolls, clues to buried treasure hidden in ancient frescoes, etc.) is likely to have been down there a loooooooong time.

With that consideration I present the following (derived from an original in the Dragon Kings high-level play sourcebook for the only true Dark Sun setting):

Time Elapsed	Paper	Wood	Metal	Soft St.*	Hard Stone**
30 days	Faded
1 year	Fragile
2 years	Brittle	Faded	Paint
5 years	Crumbled	Fragile
10 years	Dust	Brittle	Etching		Paint
20 years		Crumbled		Paint
50 years			Relief
100 years		Dust		Etching
200 years			Form	Relief
500 years				Form
1,000 years					Etching
2,000 years
5,000 years					Relief
10,000 years
20,000 years					Form

* Limestone, sandstone, marble, tufa, etc.
** Granite, flint, mica schist, nephrite jade, gritstone, etc.

The table shows the average effects of time and the elements on various materials. This will vary be prevailing climate (hot, wet and windy will accelerate erosion, cold, dry and windless retard it). Items protected from the elements will take longer to erode. Multiply erosion time by ~10 if in a sheltered location, and by more if items have either been properly curated, or sealed in a preservative anaerobic environment).

Paper and wooden objects fade over time, making it difficult, but not impossible to read or identify surface features. Fragile objects must survive an item saving throw versus fall every time they are used; brittle items must survive versus a crushing blow. Crumbled items are unusable but still identifiable as papyrus or wood; dust is completely unidentifiable and unusable.

Metal and stone items wear away over time, their shapes smoothing out until the item is completely worn away. Paint indicates that artificial coloration is gone or unrecognisable; etching means carved letters or pictures are worn away; relief indicates that deeply carved letters or images are severely eroded; form indicates that time has eroded away all but the basic form of the original stone or metal.

Why am I bothering with this? Well, there's an ongoing subplot involving Hobgoblins (think a timelost version of Japanese holdout soldiers + some Tekumel flavouring) and a particular time-locked sub-level of the Vaults...

Related links:

• The Clock of the Long Now
• Life After People

Thoughts? Opinions? Requests for breakdown times of other materials?