Fools and Magic

In the style of this and this.

There is in the world, magic. A force so mighty and potent it bears down on light and heat and the great sepulchral gloaming, pushing it back, piercing it and fracturing into the myriad colors of birds and sunsets, of bees and battlegrounds. It is kismet. Called satori. An epiphany. The moment when the dreary fog of your day to day is lifted to see something monumental. It is why the sun rises and sets and more importantly why you are compelled to look when it does. The tides and wind and storms and all the things that glimmer so enchanting that cry out for you to behold them, that is where this power goes. In love at first sight, in lightning strikes, in well placed curves and lipstick. Power they call it, like calling the splitting of the atom power. A great assortment of bastards have truck with it.  Fools, a whole foolish lot of fools, who call themselves wise strangle it. Fighters claim they ignore it, like oily water off their foul backs and yet their Violence is the Arts, poetry written in blood. 

It is spectacular because it is spectacle. 

It is fantastic because it is fantasy. 

It is magical for it is magic. 

The Fool

A pied shirt and belled-hat for these types who instead swaddle themselves in robes and other such accoutrements d'inutile. They call themselves the Wise and seek a storied sunset with a closed eye; the heart is the optic nerve by which the fantastic can be seen which they do not use. Instead, their third eye, corrupting for it is the mind's eye, is how they seek magic and thereby how it is twisted. The poet seeks magic and writes in a flophouse sweat, hands greasy and malcontent from the snapping jaws of his typewriter. The fool ignores such perceived drivel for tomes of vile use and abuse. If they could peel back their flesh and sweating hold their ribs apart, under desperate panting they'd hear their own heart would cry out breathlessly -youdonotgetit-

Starting Equipment. Ugly musty robes, once clean, you have pilfered for the look of it. A heavy bandage worn across the chest. It muffles incessant ticking in the chest -youdonotge- and a great tome, heavy with oily Power. 

Templates

A) A Great Bastard, A Spell or Two, Power +1
B) Third Eye, Power +1
C) Subservient is the World, Power +1
D) Transmogrification, Apprentice, Power +1

A Great Bastard

The world was unkind to you and its dark reflection shines in your black eyes. You may employ the following kens with ease: dirty tricks, backstabs, lies, stealth and begging. When you are Desperate, roll checks twice and like a great hooting ape take the lower value. You may always sacrifice that which keeps you sane, pacified or medicated to instead simply succeed. 

A Spell or Two

You've done it you mean and miserly Pagliacci. For when wit was enough, you went without wit and grace, for charm stolen from the sunsets and the flowers and first loves. You chanted for enchantment freely given and bled for words already written. You poor wretch you have taken the constellations from the heavens and smashed them like a vase and ignored the scream in your chest -youdono- for magic. You command it though you are not its master, like a rider upon a loyal stolen horse. You now know magic, know these spells but you do not understand them. Your third eye flutters sensing the Power, intoxicated. You can cast them but it is a mockery. You know not a warm embrace, recall only the echoes of a friend's laughter and languidly, like a fell vulture, you push such recollections aside to rip and tear the spell from its home. You don't relish the cold greasy tendons straining against your hands but neither do you think it wrong. This is the world, taught by the mind's eye. Their names are foreign to you. Select one or two from below to start and another when you steal it, win it in a duel or sacrifice something for it. 

Morning Embrace - set alight for d6 damage a target creature or flammable object you can see. The heat intensifies 1d6 for every combat round you keep your eyes on their burning form. It can be gained by sacrificing a friend. They never mattered. 

At First Sight - d6 damage to target creature +6 if wielding or clad in metal. If the target has known mature love, it jumps to another. It can be gained by sacrificing a love. Too little, far far too late. 

Lover's Guise - you assume the form of another whom you have seen or whose love you have seen. The guise is good by sight and sound, even to the gods but the touch and taste others will find repulsive. The gods are quick to punish oaths taken while as another. 

Sight, Far and Deep - with hair or nail or blood you spy upon another in a still pool, once per pool for it is stained and brackish thereafter. Desecrate a corpse to have a question answered though it usually produces a ghost. Can be gained by stealing from the crypt of a mentor. 

Enchant - a stranger becomes a sycophant. Costs 1 STR while ensorcelled. The more well known the target, the more it takes from you. 

Guiding Hand - your mind's eye wears a glove and you can manipulate objects you can see with the dexterity of your own hand. Use INT for STR of the hand. It can choke, throttle and throw as you would expect. It costs only the renunciation of meaningful embraces. 

Hide - shame is a powerful motivator. Predators like the orchid spider have none. Cloak yourself in it and be unseen, unheard or unfelt [1 dice per effect] for the duration. it can be found by sacrificing the very same and your ability to feel shame. A useful tool in pursuit of Power. 

Power

Rather than use your [dice] to cast a spell, you may instead simply use it to force your will on the world. For any physical task you attempt you may use Power and attempt with a -10 to the roll. A foes task is hindered, +10. The will is brutish, unrefined and inelegant. It can empower magic and mortals but it twists spell and breaks bone. The Power cannot thread needle, tend wounds nor carry glass. 

Third Eye

Manic now, the third eye opens, throbbing and bloodshot, darting, always open. It flows with tears, trying to find the source of a splinter that isn't there. If you concentrate, a painful thing, you can see a version of the world, one not meant for you. Some claim it's how the world really is, laid bare with cancerous growths and bone visible with skin shorn back. Others say it's just Heaven and Hell in a fractal dance around you, everywhere all at once all the time. Most just take another hit of what opened it in the first place and give in. 

While you use it you see though illusions, not just magical ones but notional ones too, for mercy and justice are pale forms before the absolute of Death.  You see the true forms of shapeshifters, though men hide their visages too and you can see through those as well. Things that are enchanted, cursed or radioactive are as apparent to you as the stained glass in a window and ground holy or unholy is hot to the touch of your shod irreverent feet. The gleeful macabre forms that possess men, demons, smile gleefully at you, astride their man vessels. They are Greed, Rape and violent mental illness. 

Observing them costs your STR. The first time you use it, your STR is halved. The second time, it is set to 1. The third time, if used without potent painkillers or other crutches of vice, kills you. If you draw a second vice, you may use the sight with only -1 STR penalty per use per day but sacrificing it would kill you. 

Subservient is the World 

Wicked goblins and dancing devils cavort in the pale moonlight. Raucous they hunger for the treasures of men, hunger to bargain and be made free to cast their wickedness wherever they go. You seek them, summon them and bind them to your will eternal. Magic may not be an oxen you can yet yoke, but these apparitions may yet bend to your heel. You read the bloody passages of the book, pages cracked and sticking from viscera they once contained. Diagrams of suffering poured over, sacred geometry studied and eye watering coin spent to acquire the Satanic tools. Naked you howl at the moon lit by fire, covered in the blood of the trusting now burning on the pyre. The black goat bleats savagely, alerting the arrival of the shades who lap the blood and wine, libations one and the same. From the woods will pour the goblins and wicked folk, banshees and redcaps. You will dance and dine with them and about you will swirl Power like so much bloody rain. This is the Summoning Dance, a mockery of the word and the magic. 

You may use an instance of your Power to bind, torture or banish a shade or devil, hag or goblin. If bound, they are your unwilling attendant. It will hate you, plan your downfall, curse your progeny and most of all obey. Strike them and strike them often lest they leave razors in your bread or pox blankets in your chambers to acquire the blood they need for their freedom. Always your mind's eye will be upon them, burning them, and they will sit on your chest while you sleep in hopes you suffocate. 

Transmogrification

This flesh, yes, this very flesh, I should have known -youdon- SHUT UP. SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP. Its all mercurial, the eye they eye was the hint I should have seen instead of watching yes yes. Too late. Too late for that. I must see, see with my mind's eye. The flesh is quicksilver. Magic is the flesh, its in the flesh!

You misunderstand. So close, so close and like always you cannot see. Blood, blood is all you know. You fail to see its most potent inside you and you smear it on your face in lieu of grease paint. The carnival is in town and you're the show. you've found magic is in the flesh. the blood. The heart even. And you force it because the book, the damn book is a hammer and your corrupting mind's eye can only see nails.  And you see yourself as a template of you own choosing. Form is function and like God's clay you can be shaped and you breathe life into yourself.  

You learn the powers of transmogrification. It is sickening. Bones reknit themselves, hair tearing through skin and bleeding so much bleeding the first time, like a virgin again. The Change is an Art and you are a child who can barely grasp the brush, but you will learn oh will you learn and pain and Power your teacher ever present. You may assume the visage of a loping wolf, thieving raven or whatever form pleases you. Be honest, they were inside you all along, clawing and pecking their way out. Balefully you may also subject others to this curse. Test Charisma after a day to revert to your true form, whatever that means to you or remain trapped a year and a day in that form. The urges of each form never go away either. Draw two cards, any combination of Hunger or Vice.

Apprentice

Love you have thrown out, comradery a sound in your ear. And yet craven need for kinships not even you can shake off. Magic's last hope for the fool, to be saved, to be understood, to be held again. You take on a partner, whom you have power over. Your needs of the other are intimate, intwined and adversarial. They desire your knowledge and Power, their reasons their own. You need their humanity, their vitality. Sex, pain and madness are the colors that paint the dark tapestry before it frays and you are redeemed, part ways or tear each other asunder. 

Mistress. there is magic in her pale beauty and she plans to kill you with a knife. A pretty face can get you out of almost any trouble, if you promise fame. Killing her grants a powerful charm. But your heart leaps into your throat at the thought and beats in time with her own. 

Student. hungrier than even you and with more talent. plans to make it look like an accident. A useful scapegoat when they come looking. Killing him provides a new spell, peeled like a hangnail from his own oily book. And yet you notice his magic is like a caress, and you feel a longing in your heart when he casts. 

Lackey. running from something, something you shield him from and dirty and dirtier work you have for him. He'll break your neck with his meaty bare hands for your Power.  Killing him grants a powerful favor from an enemy. But his drink his strong and dark and he shares it unthinkingly. it loosens your tongue and your bandages. You listen to your heart while you drink. 

Gravedigger. a miscreant, physically or in the legal sense, and they will hit you in the back of the head with a stone when they think they can get away with it and bury you themselves. They hide all your worst misdeeds and never judge your desires, as long as the drugs flow. Killing them produces and oracular skull for speaking with spirits. Mercy they elicit from you, when, convulsing as the drugs wear off, you wipe the sweat from their brow. 

Nurse. Sweet, brave, desperate. An injection in the neck while you sleep is the most painless way she can think to do it. Sews you up when things go awry, almost back to perfect. Why does she frown listening at the stethoscope?  Killing her would grant a talisman against fell magic. but she whispers, you already have one, don't you? 

Bookbinder. obsessive and keen-eyed, willing to overlook anything you might do, shy of hurting a book. For access to your library she can successfully defend you from investigation and hide your practice from prying eyes. She coddles them like babies, lovingly tending to their cracks and tears and bindings. Its never too late to save one she always says, there's magic in them, not always refereeing to the same ones as you. Killing her would bind a powerful guardian to place of your choosing. but you think, she'd forgive you for your cracks. 

No Mythic Underworld: Dungeons as Psychological Spaces

 Inspired by the ever-relevant Philotomy's Musings 

"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” ― Friedrich W. Nietzsche

I've been working for over a year now on my own fantasy heartbreaker TTRPG. Your condolences are much appreciated. It's been a great way to interrogate what I love about various editions of D&D and more importantly, what makes my friends groan when I begin to rant about them. Team initiative is in, tracking ammo is fun but needs abstracted and acquiring wealth and treasure beyond your wildest imaginings is the truest spirit of the game. 

But today, after a short few days to recharge, it led me to look at dungeons as characters. This is nothing new or substantive, there have always been themed dungeons, full of character. But this heartbreaker will (hopefully) sell them as not merely full of, but actually as characters. 

The central theme of this heartbreaker is that you're playing jerks with hearts of gold. Knaves, buffoons, thugs, brutes and most importantly bastards. People who are the result of abandonment, misuse and abuse, trying in their own way to make it in the medieval world. In many ways, the typical dungeon has experienced the exact same thing. How many dungeons take place in desecrated temples, defiled crypts and forgotten homes. They are left to crumble, decay and are taken over by typically awful, evil or similarly misbegotten creatures. If you believe a house can be alive, that a place can have a spirit, why cannot it too be traumatized. 

Philotomy's Musings surmised that the many odd rules of early dungeon exploration were due to it being part of a mythic underworld, one where laws of reality are twisted, inverted or otherwise different. Doors that close on their own, barring PC passage but allowing easy monster egress. Monsters losing their ability to see in the dark when they ally with the players is a funny referee adjudication with even more fascinating implication. 

Patrick Stuart's Veins of the Earth describes The Rapture, a malevolent force that's part of the caves deep below the earth as much as its a part of the overworlder psyche and biology. One that that twists up the people it attacks in darkness. 

Inspired by these ideas I propose that dungeons are psychological spaces as much as they are mythic and physical spaces. 

One of the elements of the heartbreaker are what I call retroactive backstories. To speed up character creation, you're encouraged to create a character on the fly without a substantial backstory. As the game progresses certain (usually violent) triggers will ask you roll on a memory table that informs your backstory. The first time you drop to 0 HP reminds your character about a tragic event from childhood or adulthood as an example of trigger and result. I think dungeons could fill a similar purpose, presenting psychological elements from the character as twisted truths for them to respond to. And of course, to attack or run away from. Like something out of Stephen King's The Shining, the dungeon knows your thoughts and fears or comes to know them as you adventure within and weaponizes them against you. 

For example, as part of a wandering monster table, remove some of the results and replace them with "Psychological Enemy". Whether randomly or otherwise, determine who the dungeon is preying on. Perhaps it uses a potent phobia of the PC, spiders made giant or corpses now animate. Maybe instead the ghost of a PC's parent forcing them to live a horrid memory before attacking the party or disappearing. Feelings related to the dungeon's abandonment and anger could be felt as physical forces in rooms: potent starvation, fatigue, withdrawal or infighting. Whatever relates to the dungeon's history. Traps too could be manifestations of the dungeons twisted psyche; malevolent pit traps designed to cause suffering or doors that fly open to reveal monsters. In essence the dungeon is haunted. 

Two potential flavors (I won't say issues) are fixed here. First, if you're worried about naturalism (how the hell did this dragon get down here and where does it shit) worry not. It's a manifestation of the party's greed, of all the greed that led to the downfall of the temple, that caused it to be here, waiting. Perhaps the monsters aren't real at all, and the dungeon pulls them from stories in our head. 

Second, traps resetting could be dungeon spirits, manifestations of the dungeon preparing them again or else simply the dungeon doing it itself. It's not a real space, it's a mythic one. A reflection of twisted psyches. An entity as greedy as you that hoards its treasures and resents you taking them away. 

Joseph Campbell in his Hero with a Thousand Faces cites the Abyss or Atonement with the Father as one of the integral steps within the Hero's Journey. The hero enters into the worst part of their journey, where they must transcend their previous life in the face of their greatest adversity. 

    "The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. They behold the face of the father, understand — and the two are atoned."

Pop culturally recall Luke Skywalker heading into the cave on Dagobah to fight dream Darth Vader and reveal horrible truths to him. That is the essence of what I'm talking about. 

For your trouble, some tables to roll upon

The Trauma/Memory Table

The heartbreaker uses an Odd-like HP/STR system. The d20 you roll to stay conscious at 0 HP correlates to the tables below. With a success, you gain a Trauma, an awful physical or mental wound among other things. On a failure gain a harsh Memory or mental disposition. I'll balance it better later for varying Constitutions. 

Trauma

20. Yikes, that hit actually killed you.
19-15. Dismembered. The limb struck (determined by 1d6) is severed. If head, lose eyes, ears or nose.
14-10. Mortal Wound. Limb is savaged.
9-7. Grievous Wound. Limb is crippled. 

6-5. Pain. Your HP will always be one shy of full.
4. Phobia. You fear the foes or its type (spiders, giants, magicians with weird mustaches)
3. Vengeance. Gain +1 damage/defense against foe or its type (spiders, giants, goblins with funny voices)
2. Grudge. Gain +2 defense against foe or its type (spiders, giants, insurance salesmen). +1d6 HP if you resolve to never use the weapon or armor worn by the foe.
1. Perspective. Your life flashes before your eyes. Gain a new perspective, a personal rule about the world. 

Memory

 Fill out your own table appropriate bad memories and put them here. Here are some vague, evocative ones from my table. Just subtract 10 from the d20 roll if you get over 10 to have one less roll.

1. Bruises. Just empty words. Scars. Now those are promises.  
2. "So much potential and yet still you fail." 
3. "I raised you better than this." But you didn't.  
4. "Dinner was nicer when you worked through it." 
5. "The things you think they say about you are true." 
6. Through tears I heard "Such a DISAPPOINTMENT" 
7. "Try this. It will make you feel better." It did.  
8. "Worthless."  
9. "If you loved me…" The rest was a blur because I did.  
10. I didn’t mean to do it. To hit them so hard. To run. It just happened.  

Here is 1d6 random encounter table for your dungeon to abuse your players with. Tweak it to match the energy of the dungeon. You could also take an existing Wandering Monster Table and replace results you don't like with some of these. 

1	Encounter, Denizen of Dungeon
2	Encounter, Phobia pulled from the bastard’s mind
3	Encounter, Trauma. Player rolls on the memory table. Dungeon twists it if necessary.
4	Encounter, Ghost. A simulacra of someone who died in Dungeon
5	Ennui, a great cloying feeling gnaws at the interlopers
6	Encounter, a monster of yore pulled from the bastards’ minds

101 Vampyres: #2 The Man-squito

Where blood is sucked up by the earth, slowly it begins to groan and cry out. The spirits of stone reject the blood, which is vital and supercharges magic. Stone is the element of consistency, never changing or doing so at tectonic intervals, so it pushes it away and Grave Flowers grow.  When blood, especially that of the meek and murdered, reaches stagnant water, the water shrieks unheard with vitality. It practically roils and any life found within is changed. The oddest result of this tragedy is when mosquito larvae begin to hatch in such waters.

A change comes over their tiny ganglions and they begin to devour one another, growing in size unnaturally large and fast, until the only one remains in the stump, pond or puddle of their home. It undergoes a horrid metamorphosis, dragging itself from the water with limbs it has no instincts for, powered by the metaphysical need for knowledge of a killer the spirit barely remembers. What results has the need for blood and the instincts of how to get it of a mosquito and the irrational half mind of a man. The spirit of the murdered swirled its grey matter as it formed, leaving behind a neurological obsession with uncovering its death. But like a game of telephone, from ghost to spirit to flesh the message decays. Most Man-squitoes go mad shortly after their final instar, with voices in their minds and obsessions they cannot understand, urging them into cities. 

The mind of a meek, scared victim suits a mosquito's instincts quite well. Though insane, they survive, hiding and darting, driven on furtively. A mosquito has incredible senses, desires pushing it along. 

Physically they have the body of a humanoid, though covered in thick sensitive hairs. Their head is a near 1 to 1 of a mosquito scaled up slightly too large until the creature has the look of a sports mascot or bobble head, muscles barely strong enough to hold up its head. Its proboscis scaled up is the size of a rapier and it is revealed at the macro scale it does not pierce but tears open flesh. 

Like most vampires of Ventus, they prefer to go after sleeping victims, the compounds in their saliva effectively numbing the wound as it forms. However, the messy wound created can bleed out and many victims are dead by morning, alerting folk to its presence. It can bound great distances with the buzzing aid of its enormous wings and insect strength but its mass is too much for it to truly fly. They instead climb gamely up tall buildings and leap onto prey below and entangle is in its six freakish limbs, four claws, one opposable, less like talons and more like those possessed by insects. It will wrestle its prey to the ground and inject its proboscis anywhere it can. But its frailty precludes it from extended fights, running away after a solid hit. They, like their spiritual progenitors are meek and cowardly. 

However, their mania can circumvent their cowardice. The voices in their head drive them to search for their killer. Weakly they know what they smell, look or sound like and seek them out. And when they find them, many things can happen depending on how insane the bug man is. It may try to take the place of the murdered, communicate with the killer to understand why it was killed or take vengeance, which can lead to another, perhaps more degenerate man-fly. 

Communication fails as the creature has no human mouth. After months of searching and failing, typically delusion leads to head bleeds, confusion, stroke and death. It will scratch its killer's visage on the ground in its own blood before it expires. 

Mirrors are effective deterrents against them. Their reflection does not line up with their notions of themselves. The cognitive dissonance can drive them mad. 

~~~ 

#2 The Man-squito

HD 2 (HD 3 if recently fed)/ AC Leather and Fast/ Damage 1d6+1

In stagnant pool where mosquito larvae dwell, the meek's spilled blood stagnates. Only one survives, eating the rest and the ghost of the dead scars the brain of the creature formed. Crawling on legs it has no instincts for it tracks its quarry with rapier mouth and muddled mind. Its killer's portrait can be found in the scars of its brain. 

WANTS: To feed, to not kill, to understand, to go to familiar places
NEEDS: To drink its killer's blood 
AVOIDS: Holy symbols of the meek, familiar places, mirrors
DESTROYED: By its own brain, its obsession, 

Let's Crawl! New Barrens, Part 2; Syncretization of Hexcrawl Methodologies

I remembered what I called this campaign two years ago! The New Moon Barrens, on account on of the new moon warping into existence over the land and the barren landscape it created its aftermath. 

It originally started as a challenge or experiment to take all the material I'd written and cram it all into a 50 by 50-mile map. I've written a lot more since then so that's a bit moot and so I'm going back to make something original again if my addled brain can still do that.

 This post was originally going to be about the regions of the map, but I realized I have so many different ideas for organizing a hex crawl, I'll have to standardize it first. We'll start by analyzing a few approaches I like, looking at how I've used them in the past and then looking at some other approaches to try to jazz things up. 

Two great posts for designing random encounter tables are here at Pencils and Paper and a tweaked version of here, from Necropraxis. 

I love Pencils and Paper's approach for its simplicity and regionality. A dragon should appear on every 2, it's in the damn name. If this were Blades in the Dark, I'd put a blade at every two and some dark on every 12. If I had a good dungeon generator, I put one on of those every 12 but alas I can't design them any way but bespoke, so wizards will more than do. Gives me and excuse to put a laughably evil wizard somewhere. 

Its regionality is also fantastic. Having a separate set of 4 for every region is fun and might bring an area to life more or reward players who think about that sort of thing. I think the results should be more deadly or dangerous in order to do that. Perhaps a three should the Fairy Wolf King of the southern forested region or at least one of his lieutenants. A four, five or six could be other important movers and shakers in that region, just less powerful of a faction/subfaction.  

7 and 8 will be "Global" threats e.g. types of creatures I want found everywhere. For this game it will probably be the dreadful eelmen and degenerate elves seeking to reclaim their home from an ancient past. 

9 and 10 will be Themes and Conflicts. I like a certain kind of gonzo in my games and paradoxically at the same time a certain kind of fairy tale vibe. Its a world where laser pistols and the power of True Love go hand in hand. Themes might be the sacred three traits magic cannot effect, True Love, Innocence and Justice. They might be simple memorials to such a time or NPCs who embody those traits. Knights on a quest might show up here for any of the three reasons. The gonzo might be Men Out of Time, with laser swords and pilot suits, seeking a crashed space plane or a dark priest fighting off some other worldly tentacled beast. Honestly knights can go there too. Knight is a concept not married to any one time or genre. 

Conflicts might be more like classic fables of old. Two wills in contest the PCs have the chance to effect. Great giants playing chess, but you cannot pass unless you help one of them. A talking oak and a field of wheat in argument about the wind. A tiger having crashed a delegation of deliberating prairie dogs, hungry. These will be the same as "Scenes" discussed later. 

Next, lets investigate the infamous engine of the OSR, the Overloaded Encounter Table. 

Despite having used it in a limited fashion in games for dungeons, which I think it lends itself quite well to, I have not had much success with it for hex crawling. I dislike fatigue as a random component (it calls to mind the infamous rest run you must take in a dungeon every 6 turns from 1974 D&D) due to the non-random nature of acquiring fatigue. It should be the result of player choice, such as a forced march or a desperate run. However, I think there are other ways to present players with choices that involve the loss of rations or hit points. Swarms of hungry insects, scavenging dinosaurs or one very fat persistent bear could result in this dichotomy (fight the bear for the sandwiches or just let him have his fill). Or perhaps the result of fatigue presents another choice, representing some thickening of terrain or increase in its difficulty. A briar patch gets added to the hex. Go through it (1 harm) or go around quickly to keep pace (+1 fatigue) or better yet, go around it at a normal pace and add +1 day to the hex (-1 Supply and a "win" for the DM and the use of the encounter table).

I think Locality and Expiration by themselves work quite well but together step on each other toes. Stretching my brain, I could come up with 5 or 6 changing localities such as tides, wind direction or the like. Maybe the song the singing rock plays? The mood the lone storm giant mentally projects with its giant mind? Which goblin tribe currently has the ire of the mad beholder who they play pranks on? With some prep I can make good use of this on a hex-by-hex basis but Expiration could simply be moved to the secondary table under Locality. For example: on 1 in 6 when you roll Locality, the locality expires.

Hex Kings

I know what I'll do to replace Expiration: add what are called Hex Kings. A Hex King is a big, bad nasty piece of work encounter. Usually, an apex predator like a dragon or the like, it's a creature or small faction that is the dominant force in the (usually) geographic region, and who makes their presence known clearly by leaving spoor everywhere. When you roll a 1 on the overloaded encounter die, you roll 1d6 again and consult the Spoor Table to see how close you are to bumping into King Kong or the equivalent.

The tracks and traces are inspired by this underappreciated post from The Retired Adventurer. I think I'll make a handout for the players to track the regional and global encounters this way. 

Hex Spoor Table 

1. The Hex King itself. Roll for disposition, distance and surprise if you like. 

2. A Lair. Determine however you like whether the monster(s) is here, there or anywhere. I like Classic D&Ds percent chance of finding a sleeping dragon in a lair. A d100 is also a good candidate here for something more granular. Increase or decrease the odds if the monsters is nocturnal, diurnal or crepuscular if you use six watches like I do (dawn, day x2. dusk, night x2). A big bad like this may have several lairs, some long since abandoned. 

3.  Fresh Spoor. The King is close. A classic example is a destroyed campsite, bodies torn apart in the manner of the monster's choosing. Could also be left over meals, nests or feces. 

4. Tracks. Can follow or avoid. 

5-6. Traces. Evidence the thing is nearby with elements unique to each encounter. 

This is sorta where we hit out first road bump. Dragons, should they be allowed to show up as both encounters and as hex kings? With a little math, dragons are showing up 1/216 + 1/36 times or a little over 3% of the time. This seems about correct. Besides some Hex Kings will not be dragons. 

Second road bump, and our first opportunity to syncretize, is do non-hex king random encounters not have traces, tracks or spore? Obviously in a real world they must, so it seems like the answer is: when you roll a 1 on the Overloaded Encounter Die, determine the encounter (a la Papers and Pencils) and then roll on the Hex Spoor Table to add the spice. It will require some interesting considerations (what does a Reoccurring NPC's lair look like?) but I live for the improv and hopefully it will encourage some exploration and hex filling as well, especially when we consider some other interesting sources. 

Other Interesting Sources 

Arnold K did indeed fix hex crawls. 

I loved the granularity of The Alexandrian's Hexcrawl essay and it was my primary source for the better part of two years while I ran Ghost Town Gunfight, my 5e western-medieval mashup. But it (or perhaps I) left something to be desired as I fumbled though each hex, hiding the route from players and fiddling around deciding distances based on overland move speed. Perhaps with more practice and speed I could get it down but I think its granularity is a strike against it.  

I loved being able to roll a fist full of d12s and know the future of their next day of travel. I loved checking for a second encounter after the first was experienced and couple with the old school disposition rules, one of the coolest fights I ever had, organically appeared. Goblins (neutral to the party) meeting them players at the same time I rolled rainy weather and then triggered a second encounter in the form of a mated pair of thunderbirds (hostile) led to an awesome fight of watching how the native goblins fought off the birds and the players emulating and later befriending them. They were even gifted a thunderbird feather after the fight as a kind of magic wand. It was totally and unplanned and the oracular nature of the dice was fruitful. 

But the tracking of their adventure mile by mile was tedious and distracting for me. 

The Goblin Punch hex crawling rules track the days in the hex rather than the miles in the party so to speak. Rather than seeing how many hexes players could blow though in a single day, hexes take a number of days to enter. It also encourages hirelings, my favorite aspect of the game in order to any serious kind of off the trail exploration. His hex synthesis also encourages the kind of kismet you get from my earlier example.

However, it's not clear to me when the hex synthesis is supposed to be done, seeing as its to compliment already known keyed hexes, what he calls Hex Content. If random encounters are determined at the table and key hexes are already finished prep, I intend to use them as soft prep first and to determine them at the table second. While the map should theoretically already be completely keyed (it is not lol) these synthesized compliments can be done in chunks around where the players are exploring as they go there. Its more economical prep. 

In the same way 1974 D&D encourages you to fill your dungeons with what you want in them first and then randomly determine them second, I'll do the same with the map. First a la The Alexandrian, I'll try to fill in as many hexes as I can, drawing on sci-fi and fantasy for inspiration. From there we can fill and supplement hexes with the Goblin Punch rules. 

Final Notes 

I have two final changes to the Overloaded Encounter Die: Percept and Advantage. 

Percept has been subsumed by the Spoor Table, where encounters get some kind of clue already, save for 1 in 6 where the creature bumps into them. So here instead I think I'll put something like Scene or Denizen. A humble encounter akin to a fable or folk tale, it gives chatty charismatic character an excuse to talk to locals, collect rumors and go on "mini-quests". These encounters might include talking trees or animals, cantankerous goblins, grumpy trolls and mischievous sprites. Anything to make the woods and plains they'll be travelling a bit more fantastic, not unlike Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions or something from The Hobbit. These would be more akin to Goblin Punch's Dynamic Sites, soft encounters.

<Tangent. Sometimes I fear my players loves these scenes more than they do dungeons or adventuring. My favorite use of this was a taking crow, thirsty and trying to fill up a water filled vase with stones from the Aesop fable the Crow and the Pitcher. Should the players help him out, he'll give them news with a bird's eye view. Should they spurn him, he'll do the same, for the bandits up the road. A fun little thing.>

Finally, Advantage. This one has always eluded me. In a dungeon it makes sense. Empty rooms are important to the ecology of any dungeon expedition (I always aim for about 50% monster and treasure free rooms per dungeon). But in the wilderness? The abstraction is that you move quickly from encounter to encounter, skipping the empty in between, for what?  Just to be given more nothing? Players already rest at night. However, I still vibe with a "nothing happens" result. Like Miyazaki's Ma, silence in between adventuring is ok. Instead, I think this time will be for NPCs to prompt the PCs for conversation, question or story or make an extended morale check. If it comes up during a rest watch, then perhaps it'll be an opportunity to increase morale, especially if libations are poured. Maybe something out of Dolmenwood's campfire mechanic. Or a good time for a fight to break out, something to be stolen or fingers to be pointed. I do love conflict. 

In conclusion I think our Procedure is going to look roughly like this:

Hex Crawl Procedure

1. Encounter. Roll 2d6 for the encounter at the same time as 1d6 for the Spoor. 

2. Setback. Terrain determines a setback that forces choice between harm or hunger. Should be linked to a dynamic or "soft" site

3. Hex King. Roll on the Spoor Table. 

4. Locality. Bespoke per region. Expires on a 1 in 6. 

5. Scene or Dynamic Site. A harmless excuse to talk to locals, bother fey or gather rumors. 

6. Ma. Time between claps. Or NPC interaction, questions or conflicts. Check hireling morale

Encounter Table

2. Dragon

3. Regional, Powerful Faction

4. Regional, Faction 1

5. Regional, Faction 2

6. Regional, Faction 3

7. [Recurring NPC]

8. Global 

9. Global 

10. Theme or Conflict 

11. Story or Aftermath

12. Wizard

The Beating City: Ventus

Ventus: The Beating City 

The road winding through the bog is quiet, no blood reflecting off its old pavement stones today, perhaps due to fog. Attacks are unheard of on this road, though wagons and carts break down enough, due in equal parts to large cracks and the bog's generous mire. At all hours of the day wolves can be heard though they never stray and are never seen within a bowshot of the road. They know better.

Eventually, smoke will be smelled drifting down the valley if the wind is right and soon enough seen, dozens of smokestacks above a squat sprawling tumor. It seems to cling to the banks of a slow-moving river, more a bog attempting to escape the valley than river, thick with smelling mud and small fish. In the summer it vomits forth midges and mosquitos which are unbearable and bite often and, in the winter, so too does the air. 

The tumor is long but neither deep nor tall. The soft loam makes for poor basements and foundations, though thieves and honest men alike try, buildings sunk and built atop again, old bricks cannibalized faster than the muck can steal them. The sewer system, simple, is more akin to geologic strata, layers upon layers. 

Here and there canals crisscross through the roads, more like the veins in an insect's wings than the imagined blueprints of any surveyor. Holy symbols, in the form of bells, books and singing bowls, hang from their bridges in great trellises, some so far down as to disappear into the water, allowing Spanish moss and duckweed to meet. Gutters, pipes and spouts of all sizes and ages drain into them from all directions. There is no separation between bog and city, as by degrees and slopes, the city meets it, geographic blurring. 

The people here, tan and leathery of skin, move quickly about their business, skittering and then stopping suddenly tense, like tiger beetles, listening. So too like beetles are their bodies, short and barrel chested, though their legs are lean, barring on sticklike and their veins, very obvious even in the very healthy. Nine in ten in Ventus have varicose veins. The average height is six inches short than the next nearest city over the old, shorn down mountains. These are defense mechanisms. 

Typical folk dress in modest, muted colors and garb with many layers, even in summer, which can be quickly thrown off if need be. Only women are permitted to wear red. In sharp contrast, are the priests who are often brightly colored, extravagantly so, with veils over their faces and bells on their wrists and ankles. Priests live here like flowers live in florist shops; multitudinous, brightly colored and transient. Priests are always welcomed in Ventus. 

Strange customs abound here, but so do they abound everywhere. Newcomers and strangers are greeted with worthless coins and baubles, bags of sand or grain and watched ponderously when it is received. Gift giving, especially of religious tokens, is the norm and steady economy has been built around the production and aggressive sale of crosses, wooden saints, miniature carvings of temples and impressive woodcuts of religious paintings. These hawkers have even earned a name, which translates more or less to noisy priests. The people of Vantus (called Ventoos) also are known to walk barefoot during the day and wear thick slippers, heavy wool socks or even ordinary boots to bed at night. The poorest are known to simply wear boots at all times and the richest own several pairs of thick woolen socks with bells on them. Celebrations in Ventus are almost never private but held in special public places, typically under large gazebos or temple spaces dedicated to such events. Close friends may not even know where the other lives.

Stranger still is the physiology of Ventoos. Diseases of the blood, almost exclusively inherited, are incredibly common. One in three with a lineage back further than three generations, or about one in ten have sickle cell anemia, the curving of red blood cells. Also common are variants of anemia, especially iron- and B12-anemias. Thrombocytosis, an excessive number of platelets in the blood, is also common. Interestingly, cancers of the blood (lymphoma, leukemia etc.) are no more common than anywhere else in Centerros. Families often track these diseases, which they attribute to various saints, and count as familial blessings. The sight of an old man stopping to massage his arms or legs is a common sight in Ventus.

 

<Tangent. In Centerros the four humors is the correct paradigm of human health. When you are born and under what stars and in what season affect the balance of blood, phlegm and black and yellow bile in your body and in turn affect your personality.>

Ventoos are stereotyped to being quick about their business to point of rudeness, early to bed and late to rise, and very slow to friendship. These are not necessarily untrue, but foreigners are often surprised that someone from Ventus has considered them a friend for sometimes without them knowing.  They are busy private people, nearly always in motion. Only at noon, during the hottest part of the day, due they seem to relax. 

Perhaps the only ones unwelcome in Ventus make up its oldest faction, the Ventus Guard, originally tasked with protecting the city's king, they are mistrusted, often hated blamed for most of the cities problems and accused of taking bribes and seizing power of those they swear to protect. Many of these accusations are not untrue: One of the cities nicknames is "The City of One-Thousand Coups". The city's current king is far from the first to have been member of the notorious guard and far from the first to have public revolts put down with lethal force. 

The pulse of the city is stop and start. Lethargic yet strained. It beats, like a living thing.

 

All of this is of course, due to the vampire epidemic. 

The city of Ventus is infested with them, dozens of varieties from giant intelligent vampire bats to twisted mind-flayer like creatures who drink spinal fluid. Most every color and stripe of vampire can be found in Ventus, crawling through its sewers, jumping from roof to roof and flying above its citizens heads at night. Its boggy woods are a den of bloodsuckers fighting each other for territory, prey and blood. Intelligent vampires plot within (and without) the city scheming for power and blood. This is as intended. 

Ventus has always had a relationship with blood. It does a great deal of butchering more so than its neighbors. Its bog and loam make growing crops nearly impossible aside from its rice. However, its goats, ducks and other sturdy livestock do wonderfully, and great beasts dredged up from its river can take days to be drained of blood. Each district processes its own animals, so almost nowhere in the city does blood does not flow into its water. This is one reason why vampires may be drawn to it. They're densest in the forests and this is due to the city's namesake.

Ventricalus was a conqueror. His Acerulean armies carved deeper into the heart of new Vakehana faster and with more bloodshed than any of the legions of the Empire. And when he conquered the city of Ventus after a month long siege, he renamed it in his own honor. He stopped in the city because he found Pulmus. The local god of the valley, he was a feared ruthless one, his sacrifices thrown into the forest and his prayers were for him and his children to stay away. He was a hungry god, a stalking one, a lover of bloodshed and one after Ventricalus' own heart. He became obsessed with Pulmus and worshipped him. Pulmus rewarded his human sacrifices of defeated foes. He brought and empire's worth of bloodshed to a god who spent their limited divinity feasting on sickly, lamed goats. And like an invasive species, his children bred out of control. 

Eventually to protect his city, he made a deal with the children of Pulmus. Protect it from attack and have your pick of the litter. Each year Ventricalus sent for people to the town square where they were anointed, ritually scarred and their throats slit. Pulmus' requirements were simply, one of each: one lively, one innocent, one sickly and one willing. The Ventus Guard was formed after the second revolt over the pact. 

And yet, the city moved on. The pact kept roads safe, and cattle spared. Sieges and war never touched the city again and vampires stayed out of the city. Though Ventricalus would be killed in a final bloody revolt, his pact lives on. The Pact is the Pact. And it is the Ventus Guard who now enforce both ends of the pact, rounding up the four victims each year and putting down any vampires who enter the city. It is a thankless job, one they're very good at. 

~~~

A Vampyre

#1 Feral Man Bat 

HD 2/ AC Leather/ Damage 1d6 

Curse a bat with the blood of human, whose body rejected the vampire's kiss. Or curse a human with the blood of a bat summoned by a vampire. The end result is the same, something horrid lacking the grace of the bat and the humanity of a man. It skitters around on all fours though it longs to stand, while it cranes its head bite a heel hanging from a bed. Its creator inevitably rebukes it and it searches to fill the void with a brood of its own, more maligned than it. The touch of its progenitor is more than it can handle. 

WANTS: To sneak into your home and lick the blood from your feet, to breed 

NEEDS: To return food to its brood, to remember humanity it never had

AVOIDS: Fire (its skin like pitch), those that created it

DESTROYED: By the touch of the holy symbol of Pulmus

This will be the setting for my 101 Vampyres posting I'll be doing. I intend eventually to run it as a city crawl campaign. I want to run it as a vampire of the week game with the players as members of the Ventus Guard, the elite vampire killing faction of the city. Each session they'll have to investigate crime scenes, do legwork and battle vampires and bureaucrats alike to determine what kind of vamp did the murder. One of my friends more cleverly referred to it as Vampire CSI. I figured a campaign solely within a city should have enough personality to enjoy being in for at least a dozen sessions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

101 Vampyres: Poetry, Stat Blocks and Life Draining Monsters

 Introduction 

I have a goal, a dream if you will, a vision of a future where a man can run a campaign with only vampires and never tire of them. Where players never grow bored staking their hearts, chasing them along dark alleys and never cease fearing their turning bite and hypnotic eyes. Well, be the change you want to see in the world. This is the introductory post for what will hopefully be a long series on vampires and stretching my creative limits to create 101 interesting and useful vampires, or vampire-adjacent monsters. But first we must discuss how vampires translate from folklore to RPGs. 

Vampires are endlessly fascinating. If you stretch your definition a bit, as you must with most anthropological concepts which defy categorization (nerds, especially ones with degrees love categorization), nearly every culture in the world has some version of vampires, demons that suck life, devils that drain blood or spirits which rise from the grave to feast on the living. 

They are doubly fascinating when used in RPGs and I think this is due to their conceptual density and how they often force the rules to bend (or break) around them. When you discuss vampires, you're often discussing the myriad other tropes which surround them; aversion to sunlight, garlic and holy symbols, their inability so cross running water, their speed or strength or perhaps their allusions to nobility, classism and their predatory habits. You could also discuss less well-known tropes like their hypnotism, obsession with counting and control over or aversion to animals. Much less well-known, a virgin horse and boy would be used to identify a would-be vampire's grave by balking at it and refusing to cross, though in Serbia it was a black horse, associated with the underworld, which would stop at the grave. The density of these tropes slowly declines as you move outwards from popular culture and into the realm of the anthropological but remain evocative and useful. 

Everyone expects at least some of these tropes in their game when dealing with vampires and this makes them fantastic monsters to use. Everyone knows trolls must be killed with fire and any subversions of this trope often feel cheap, but vampires have enough interesting components to subvert, invert or lampshade so as to be switched up on a setting by setting or even campaign by campaign basis.  They lend themselves well to all levels and styles of play, especially in the OSR where you must employ creative measures to kill them efficiently. They fill out almost any part of the Dungeon Checklist , especially Arnold's #3, Something to Kill You, where they can be telegraphed easily (a mysteriously clean empty coffin) and avoided easily (cross a convenient stream or patch of sunlight) for low level adventurers. They reward planning ahead and choosing proper equipment, harkening all the way back to Classic 1974 D&D with a clove of garlic right alongside wolf's bane and a mallet and stakes.  

As for bending the rules around them, a bestiary would be remiss to not include their weaknesses but they rarely fit into existing game mechanics. Both 5e and 3.5 "fudged" these weaknesses into their Monster Manual entries, with it being long-winded Trait in 5e and a special subsection in 3.5. Curiously, in 5e they may cross running water at the expense of 20 acid damage a turn, a ludicrous decision in my opinion. Like hammering a pair of pliers into a wrench. I think this is not an issue of vampires being outliers, but the whole structuring of monster stat block/lines to begin with.

I think this is indicative of issues with modern bestiaries. They are bloated with so much raw information its can be difficult to even determine what the monster is even supposed to do, at least tactically, let alone within the fiction (A whole blog has been dedicated to parsing the behavior's of 5e's monstrous compendiums). I doubt very much I need to know a vampire's "Skill Focus (selected Craft or Profession skill)" nor their "Perception +7" bonus in play but there you have it. Tactics and fiction should really be seamless and identical. The fact that I'm even making the distinction seems indicative of the problem.

Interestingly, 4e gets the closest to what I'm looking for, at least partially (its certainly the smallest block in new school D&D). Its vampire spawn have a trait called "Destroyed by Sunlight". If they can't get out of direct sunlight in one turn, they are turned to ash and destroyed. Mechanically light. Short, sweet and poetic.

Monsters need poetry. They require evocative language to inspire DMs to use them. I think one of the best monster manuals I've seen, if not the most efficient, Luke Gearing's Volume 2 Monsters &, a reinterpretation of the monster half of the 1974's Original D&D Monsters and Treasure booklet. While certainly not a tactical book, I think it gets closer to the heart, mystery and magic of monsters. Vampires especially need this. 

Coding and Poetic Stat Lines

I read a blog post somewhere recently (and shame on me for not saving it on one of my rabbit holes) where monsters were described (in all caps!) by their WANTS, NEED and DESIRES and probably some other right-to-the-point words. I think it helps "code" monsters e.g. make them versatile by giving them parameters they act under or stimuli to respond to. It takes precious CPU usage off a DMs already fried brain. 

<Tangent. You could additionally write more specific stuff. I had a green dragon who always ran away as soon as he lost 25% of his HP. I had a mad yeti, burned in the face from a prior encounter, who wouldn't fight near flame and would flee if he took more than 10 fire damage. At some point you move away from "code" to just preparing unique, specific reactions to events.>

This may seem paradoxical, poetic interpretations of monsters coupled with "code" to "program" monsters, but I think it works well in action.  For example, here's one for one of my favorite monsters, the phase spider. 

Phase Spider

HD 2/AC Leather/Damage 1d6+1

When spiders nest in wizards' towers, her strange brood will outgrow her and parasitize a wizards magic like a leech. It grows, eating its siblings like sharks in the womb until one remains. This is the phase spider. 
It jumps between worlds, taking nightmares to lands Here, Imaginary and Ethereal.
It weaves webs that real dreamcatchers are made of and hunts you from dimensions you cannot see. 
What will be left of you when your spirit is caught in its web, but your body moves on? 

WANTS: To eat things that dream, to drain life from magicians 
NEEDS: To eat, to survive
AVOIDS: Bright light, large flames (small ones it puts out with spittle) 

DESIRES: To spin webs anchored between worlds

 

Perhaps WANTS and DESIRES is superfluous, but I feel like DESIRES implies a sort of advanced, premeditated motive. A wolf wants to eat you but a werewolf desires to taste the fear in your blood. You could string quite a few more of these along but I think more than 4 begins to increase the signal: noise ratio. For more powerful or unique monsters, you could give them unique codes perhaps the evil priest SUPPLICATES demons but then again you could put "supplicate demons" under DESIRES. Perhaps DREAMS (of) or PERISHES (if) could be used for specific flavor or to signal weaknesses. Let's see if we can conjure up a classic Dracula-type with this format.

Vampire (Classic) 

HD 7/AC Maille/Damage 1d6+1

Take a man of nobility, in life who lusts for life, for the finer things, for flesh. Make sure he would do anything to get it. Make sure he can lie, as all good nobles can. Curse him and cut out his tongue so he cannot taste and drain him of all his blood. Bury him in the soil of his homeland. This is one of the paths a man may take to immortality. 

DESIRES: To seduce you, to control you, to live in luxury

NEEDS: To feast on the blood of the living

AVOIDS: Sunlight, holy men, mirrors, others like itself

DESTROYED: By sunlight, stakes of local wood to its heart, decapitation and fire. Nothing else will work for long. 

I like it. Next post I'll discuss how I plan to define a vampire, some fun ideas I have for them and some biological sources of inspiration. 

A New-ish Campaign

 

I've never played a Zelda game but that's pretty raw. 

I did it. I slew the greatest beast the hobby has: THE SCHEDULE. About two years ago through sheer force of will I carved out a chunk of solid time-stream dedicated to D&D and gaming on Thursday nights and got some other busy adults to do the same. It's wonderful. But its online and online games just don't hit the same as in person games sometimes. As such I have used up more mojo and wrangled a group together for a Sunday evening game of either B/X or Original 1974 D&D for an in person game! Now that the hard part is done, I have to do the other hard part and prep the damn thing before next Sunday. Luckily everything a DM writes is never wasted; if you get nothing else from this post understand that all prep, even unused is just biding its time to be used again. 

The Challenge: A Campaign within 50 sq miles 

I want to run a sandbox hexcrawl I never got to use and maybe throw a few old modules on top of it as well. I'll also draw from my last few years worth of dungeons that can be reused for fresh faces. And I want to cram it all into 50 sq miles worth of space just to see how a small scale campaign with a real tight focus feels. 

Goals: Put together everything I've learned reading blogs and running game to make a tight focused sandbox game. 

First we'll need a map. 

 

Hey look, a map.

With each hex being 6 miles its 72 x 60 miles which is close enough to 50 x 50 for me. Maybe I'll cut off the last two columns if I can't find anything inspirational to put there. 

A point of light setting, the only friendly civilized parts of this region are the two forts with towns and the town in the center, Tarnburg. Putting them in the middle makes it less likely to wander off the maps back towards civilization, The forts are ruled by a feuding baron and duke, technically part of the same empire but like the houses Harkonen and Atreides on Arrakis, they despise one another and secretly aspire to conquer the other. A few conflicts prevent this. For one the giant fucking moon that hovers over the desolate wastes in the middle of the map. 

Conflicts 

An enormous moon, probably a few miles wide, warped into existence a few thousand feet above the lush grassland about a century ago. It immediately began sucking all the water up from the region with some kind of tractor beam/reverse gravity, drying up the marshland and plains. 

<Tangent. I much prefer plains and savannah over woods in my games. Maybe my characters were abused one to many times in endless same-y forests of the games of my youth but I find flatlands much more inspiring. The megafauna and ecology of the Serengeti are endlessly inspiring especially when extinct creatures of the past make up part of the food chain. If I need forests, a copse of plains trees will do fine>

A local Conan type flew up there in a chariot pulled by cockatrice, or so the legends go and disappeared. While he never reappeared, days later, the moon made an enormously loud pulse, with a shockwave like Krakatoa, destroying the town beneath it and further flooding the region from the tsunami that followed from the water of the Great River. It now only intermittently sucks up water and a hundred years later he's worshipped as god-hero and saint by the locals, his priests forming a cult of bodybuilding, swordsmanship and athletics. The cockatrice (think more velociraptor that turns you to stone instead of chicken) has become a locally protected animal and to kill one is considered bad luck, at least by the hero cult. Ordinary folk avoid them.

However, the moon continues to be an issue, sucking up precious water at a much slower rate, but every full moon releasing some and dripping all the time but not at equilibrium and every month, the dry earth creeps closer to the food supply of the region. The ground, sucked dry of its aquifer, can barely hold the water, leading to flooding. Huge puddles, like shallow lakes appear and disappear with the weather. And during the thunderstorms, the Eelmen raid. 

Eelmen 

The Duke and Baron each were tasked with dealing with the forces of Chaos to the West, a land in permanent dusk. The Eelmen rule it, under their brooding and petty Eel King. Nobody knows where eels come from, only that Eelmen are made from them. Obviously, the answer is spontaneous generation, arising wholesale from the guts of river mud, crawling to the river and swimming thousands of miles upstream like medieval rats from cheese cloth or goblins from refuse and negative energy. The Eelmen catch them and grow them in cold pools and feed them a diet of human blood, ritualistic fat and bones, so many bones. Often they'll simply toss still living humans they capture into the pools, and like piranha, the elvers strip them of flesh. The fat makes them crave the calcium in the bones of these unfortunate souls. They will need it for what happens next. They grow huge and contort, rubbery skin thickening, primitive lungs ballooning in too-tight ribcages and pectoral fins stretching as heavy bones grow painfully in them forming long thin razor sharp four-fingered hands. The slimy mutants are dragged from the pool, forced to take on air, cough up dense phlegm from pharyngeal jaws and given a hooked spear, the signature weapon of the Eelmen. 

This YouTube video is 15 years old. It only went up to 240p. But it is exactly what's in my head. Exactly. 

Eelmen are made, not born. And they are made to hate. Proud, agile and clever they embody all the worst traits of their hungry primitive kin. They use hit-and-run tactics, ambushes from the pools that form in the desolate lands under the moon and raid under the cover of dark during thunderstorms. In combat they are merciless, hooking with spears, tripping and disemboweling, coming to finish off a foe later. With two sets of jaws they are infamous for biting and not letting go, even in death. In fact, if losing a battle to a mighty foe they may simply latch on before being killed to slow their enemy down, giving their comrades an advantage. They do this not to aid their allies but to spite their enemies, ultimate sore losers when their deadly pride is wounded. Their bones are cartilaginous and they can squeeze into spaces of creatures a quarter their size, lacking collar bones like cats. Their two weaknesses, besides arrogance and love of betryal, are their slow speed on dry land, slithering (or sidewinding to "run") and their need to stay damp. A dry Eelman will suffocate within a few days, but not before making others around it as miserable as it can.   

 They despise each other only slightly less than the other denizens of the area. It is because of them that the Baron and Duke are afraid to openly attack one another. Like a Mexican stand off, all three factions are waiting for the other to play their hand. Simultaneously, all three are trying to ascertain the secrets of the mystery Moon, gleaning great power within if the remnants that fall from it occasionally are anything to be seen. So they send adventurers! (A rival adventuring party of Eelman would be fascinating).

I have a few other conflicts going on in the background I may incorporate as well. Elves being up to no good and something about a Rainbow Veil being shattered and its denizen pouring into the Mortal World to stop the Unreality from entering will be present. But we can save that for a later post. Next post on this new campaign we'll churn out some hopefully solid encounter tables.