Last night we played our first game since the Sleeping Feathered Swine incident.

Rose’s Devotee of the Corpulent One got torn up, set on fire for medical reasons, and left to rot in a cave in that game, so with no Mystic in the party and her brother Roy wanting to join us again, he agreed to test out the new Mystic rules I’d been thinking about.

I randomly threw in “snake worshipper” with the options, which Roy obviously chose, which was great because it meant I got to make a little snake worshipper book and actually write out the new Mystic rules and decide that snakes are the keepers of secrets and sometimes need help solving mysteries so they can know more secrets and are the mortal enemies of the bird god Yoon-Quiun and his blue-bird-troll-looking-motherfucker-chosen who also claim to be the keepers of secrets but are in fact the keepers of lies.

Then a few hours before the game I re-found this print by Florian Bertmer, entitled “Order of the Seven Serpents”:

 

 

So a few text messages later Roy had obviously chosen that over the pure Old Serpent snake cult I’d already made a book for because it’s about a thousand times more metal, so I tweaked the cult and made a new book.

 

And then they were going to need to find supplies and transport when they got out of the mountains so I used my town generator to make Yellow Watch, the last town Michael’s wizard stopped at before going into the mountains with his doomed friends then making new ones. The town ended up being run by militant nudists, and I left it up to Michael to decide if his wizard would think to warn everyone of that. He did not.

 

And I started a world map for them to expand on as they actually visit new places or steal other people’s maps or learn rumours.

 

We also tested out Rose’s Cursed Coral Collection of ceramics because they’re the first she’s ever made and they’re awesome.

 

I’ll do a post with the new Mystic rules and full print-outs after they’ve been fine-tuned a little bit more, but the gist of it is that Mystics no longer have set spells, just free reign to make things happen that they think their god would approve of within general guidelines of power, and a table to roll on to see if it happens or not.

For now, here’s a rundown of what happened last night:

Read the rest…

YELLOW QUEEN

Equal parts mystic folklore and flesh, ruler of the Yellow City, smooth-limbed and whisper-voiced, a creamy advanced jaundice complexion and a face hidden behind a brocaded veil to be disposed of on her next wedding night.

Summoned by sects and cults to offer her a new groom that they might hear her rattled whispers of fortune and future.

She does so love them, her collection of suitors, though none have endured the consummation of their union unspoiled.

YELLOW CITY

A hazy metropolis the pale yellow-green colour of powdered bile. The features of the inhabitants seem extended somehow, their skin spongy, and they taste of soap.

Being half dream-scape, obtaining directions in the Yellow City is a hopeless task. To make your way you’ll need to focus on whatever it is that you desire to find.

For every attempt to find a place/thing/service, the player who rolls highest on a d20 must make an INT check, but if the player who rolled lowest fails a WIS check, roll on the Hindrances in the Yellow City table before you get there.

If the INT check itself is failed, roll on the Lost in the Yellow City table.

Much like a dream, anything encountered on those tables will become your new focus until they’re resolved or someone rolls a 1 or 20 in the process, in which case you may choose to move on (or re-attempt a failed INT check).

However, anyone that has been wronged without some manner of closure will likely intrude on you later.

Alternatively, guides can be employed, though their services are not free.

THE CHIMING CHAPEL

The immense palace bristling with bell towers where the Yellow Queen wanders her chambers amongst smouldering piles of incense, forever veiled and awaiting her next suitor.

BLACK EMPRESS

Smiling under a chittering black mass of beetles (or so it seems in the dark), the jealous false-sister of the Yellow Queen who wishes for marital celebrations to end and the mourning night to wake.

She can tell the past but there is always a price.

Her sarcastically sulky, smarmy, oil-tongued people live and travel through the shadows of the Yellow City, waiting for the night, calling out their Yellow neighbours.

LIGHT

Within the Yellow City time doesn’t abide by normal schedules, turning a corner might as easily turn morning into moonless night.

Lamplighters are therefore one of the most important and most harried occupations in the city, tasked with ensuring that the smoking lamps of streets and houses never go out, because we can’t have the shadow people moving out of their dank corners can we?

The position of the lamps are however untouchable, immutable, and while you may think you’re doing a good thing by moving a lamp closer to eliminate the shadow people’s lurking space, the people of the Yellow City will shriek in terror and beat you with fish until the lamp is returned.

Torches, lanterns, and candles are considered obscene and you’ll be drenched in buckets of spoiled condiments and pâté on sight.

THE FLORISTS AND THE BAKERS GUILD

The seething rivalry between the Florists and the Bakers Guild is as old as the city, though more recently the Bakers Guild have come to accuse the Florists of scheming in league with the Black Empress. After all, funerals require flowers, not frothy cakes, and the Necroflorists in particular are ever so shadowy aren’t they?

Both sides remain ever eager to conscript others into their elaborate sabotages, offering rewards of secrets and their more covetable creations.

REMOVING OBJECTS FROM THE YELLOW CITY

When leaving the Yellow City, if you have stolen, requested more than your fair share of a reward, or purchased an outlandish item (so buying a sword is fine, but not so much if you focussed on finding the Returned Ironmonger, who forges blades in the image and essence of his near-death terror), you’ll need to make a WIS check for each instance. Unless you fail the check, you’re unable to ignore the unreality of the item and it decomposes/melts/fades/floats away as a cloud of thin-legged moths/otherwise disappears as dreams so often do.

If this happens to 5 or more items at once they’ll amalgamate into a mocking representation of your greed, separate from the Yellow Queen and free from her influence, with HD equal to the number of items. It will escape cackling wildly into the night if it can; only to keep coming back to upset your plans when most inconvenient/embarrassing, or simply to keep ruining a good night’s sleep.

d10	Hindrances in the Yellow City
1	d6 Chaplains Furtive moist-eyed old men with sagging lilac skin and silken purple robes, their mouths held open in a surprised drooping sigh beneath the slanting golden spires of the circlets closed around their craniums. Terribly interested in your relationships and the customs of the outside world. They show cringing supplication to Matrons and Ladies in Waiting, fawning moist-palmed pity to Suitors, exasperated fear to the Florists and Bakers Guild, and lord themselves over lowly Celebrants.
2	Necroflorist Bright purple eyes peering from their damp black form; skin, lank hair and clothes like a black hole. Offering you a violet daisy and wondering if you've come across any bodies from which it might cultivate a new bloom, or if by chance you'd care to donate your own.
3	d4 Matrons Warm-smiled women of immense girth and soft powdered makeup, with little superfluous arms that emerge from the folds of their dresses to fuss about. They're ever so sure that there's something you should be getting ready for or doing, the wedding is so close.
4	Suitor Drifting melancholy turning to ravenous horror, the Yellow Queen's former husbands still wander the Yellow City. Roll on Suitor Transformation table if you upset them.
5	d6 Ladies in Waiting Frothy dresses and misshapen pearls draped over impeccable manners, painted pliable masks concealing scathing wit and needle-filled sucking chasm mouths.
6	Wandering Pack of 4d4 Celebrants Desperately seeking knowledge of the next wedding to take place, will become maniacally despondent if you cannot convincingly assure them of some small details.
7	Obscene Baker Fancy-swaggering through the street carrying a monstrous swaying soufflé the height of a child, morbidly proud, spewing offers of having a taste like they were threats whilst trying to both get away from you and parade the fruit of their labour.
8	Flower Crabs Scuttling things with nervous curling unfurling manipulator arms and the fat little faces of terribly ugly little girls, shedding wilted flowers from their carapace wherever they go.
9	Yellow Queen's Chamber Guard x d4 Slightly addle-minded cheerful fellows in dainty puffy slashed sleeves and little pantaloons over slim stocking-covered legs, wearing enclosed eyeless bucket helmets to preserve the Queen's privacy, finding their way by the sounds echoing through the helmet's mounded swirls, defending the Queen's honour by way of brittle-bladed halberds and the heavy ledgers hanging from their waists. Everything in varying shades of yellow and gold. Charisma check to avoid a spell cast from a Chamber Guard's ledger.
10	Somnambulant Dreaming Cultist The people of the city turn stiff and alert and their eyes dart away while talking to you, watching the cultist drift along the street while their neighbours take dainty nibbling bites of the dream flesh like cleaning fish. If you cause the cultist to gain consciousness they will be enraged at your carelessness before waking life pulls them back from the Yellow City.

d10	Lost in the Yellow City
1	You find yourself in the Raining Hall, a rich cream-walled room with a vaulted ceiling dripping globules of itself down towards the erratic cleaning staff darting about the room. Whenever a drip actually hits someone's skin, the entire ceiling falls in a slopping crash, with another already dripping in its place. The current cleaning staff have been working for several days and the room is starting to fill.
2	An enormous crawling toad with a mounded hill of a back, where a collection of Unmarried sit snugly inside fleshy holes crooning to each other of their nuptial desires. Earnestly warns you to stay clear of the Owl (entry 10) and its perverse corruptions, offering sanctuary and transport on and in its back if you should so need it.
3	You realise that you've wandered into the middle of a long hall filled with guttering lamps and a single, frantic lamplighter running back and forth refilling and relighting lamps as they splutter out at random. Slick trails of spilt oil surround the enormous golden cistern and the lamplighter's pantaloons are drenched with sweat. Groups of sulkily impatient shadow people gather in the darkness, muttering sweetly that it is high time for the night's activites to begin, and more and more lamps are being left unlit at the outer edges.
4	You stop in a close-walled street packed with a rambling queue of people waiting for their turn to sit in a shallow corner of a hexagonal public bath. A wedge of people have already lined up behind you and murmurs of dissent rumble along the line.
5	Your footsteps echo into the Dream Pool. Slick blacks walls and tiles surrounding a wide pool in a drip-echoing circular chamber, filled with a liquid like thin custard where beautiful men wade about softly. If you submerge your head you can drink the dreams of another to learn a secret or desire. Roll a d20 for each character that plans to drink and record the number. Every time they attempt to drink a dream they must make a Constitution save. If they fail, the amount by which they missed builds up, they can feel the pool's fluid flowing through their tissues, and when it matches the result of the d20, the beautiful men will come to pull them into the pool and drink them. Beautiful Men x half of d20 result
6	You find yourself wandering about in a lost corner of the gift room of the Chiming Chapel. Intricately wrapped boxes piled high around tables holding caged creatures and servants, dangling makeshift chandeliers of linked golden gifts, mounds of cake and pastries in varying states of decay and deliciousness.
7	A huge figure in relief; torso, elongated arms, head craning from its neck, bulges out of a wall spouting poetry with wafting gesticulations to a crowd while adoring admirers rub their hands over its prodigious jangling belly. In the dim lamplit sitting rooms behind his wall the nobles of the Yellow City exhange streaming gossip in languid repose, information drifting about like smoke. Rumour has it, that in the half-light of the rooms they even traffic with their shadow counterparts. Entrance can only be gained in pieces through his mouth. Your body will mend once passed through the other side (though equipment won't), but if you try to make him swallow you in anything more than thigh-sized chunks he will blush with a, "Oh no I couldn't possibly, far too large for my little mouth.."
8	You wander into the Spinster's Wheel, the courtyard meeting point of six streets, where the Unmarried of the city converge nightly to feast on the Florists' unused arrangements, carted in by wary apprentices.
9	You find yourself in a dining square full of round wooden slat tables holding morbidly obese human forms apparently made of pudding, surrounded by seated people digging wobbling yellow chunks from them with pitted iron spoons. When the puddings notice you they all call out at once trying to coerce you into sitting at their table, indicating how delicious their spoon wounds look and the satisfied faces of their diners.
10	An enormous owl with human arms emerging from the slick feathers at the sides of its breast, surrounded by a harem of the Unmarried, inquisitive as to opportunities to add to its collection, attempts to entice an exchange by offering objects from the depths of its feathers. Will entertain the idea of a short-term addition as it is in competition with the Toad (entry 2) leading up to tonight's Bouquet Banquet (entry 8) where one will be decided as Lord of the Unmarried.

d6	The Cost of a Guide in the Yellow City
1	A poem.
2	Accompany them to the home of their intended lover and successfully petition their desires on behalf of your guide. If you fail, both your guide and their intended lover: 1. Fall upon you with ridicule and knives. 2. Thrash you with wilted bouquets of roses. 3. Transfer their obsessive affection to you. 4. Fall apart into slithering piles of luminescent slugs.
3	A hand, it doesn't matter whose.
4	Your most treasured possession.
5	Carry their burden while they guide you. They may not take it back and the baskets tend to contain things that get rather upset when dropped.
6	Obtain a slice of delicious cake from a member of The Baker's Guild without being seen.

d6	Suitor Transformation (HD equal to the number by which your Charisma check failed when you upset him)
1	His torso peels apart to expose dusty, pulsating mounds like fleshy compost piles covered in tiny shivering mouths, and 10+d20 bloodworm red phalluses snake from his groin, writhing across the floor in their immense length, seeping sticky, adhesive precum from the tips of their swollen heads. When wilfully touched they retreat in flaccid repulsion back to the mounds, along with anything stuck to them.
2	A thick long-bodied fish with shimmering pale blue silver scales and dead eyes, gnashing its translucent teeth and writhing its way towards you. Six clones of the suitor sit fused along the sides of the fish, feverishly masturbating and ejaculating in steady streams like a grotesque fountain, causing the ground to become ever more slippery and suitable for the eel-like body of the fish. Fish starts with no AB/AC. Increase fish's AB/AC and decrease player's AB/AC by 1 per Round, while all of the clones live this continues indefinitely. If any of them are killed, while the fish's AB/AC is higher than the number of clones left, increase the player's AB/AC and decrease the fish's AB/AC by 1 per Round until it matches the number of clones left.
3	Like a giant stocky soldier crab if its insides were made of icecream bulging through a shell made of rotting lingerie sewn together several sizes too small, melting as it gets more and more excitable.
4	Conjoined twin giants, fused by ribcage and thigh, one demure and fair, one overbearing and grotesque. Red roses fall from the grotesque's split belly, a cloud of bees from his brother's, and yellow honey flows over their chins.
5	His torso extends and tears up its center, broken ribs rolling around like the dying legs of a centipede, his arms and sighing head loll backwards as he stumbles around trying to support the weight of his still-expanding body, in the midst of which you can see his pale child-clones budding and growing from the pink and purple mass to reach out and slash at you with fine silver knives.
6	A maiden-faced wasp tears itself from his back, dropping the body like shed paper skin, wet new wings lifting it into the air to curl its abdomen forward, presenting its throbbing cock stinger engorged and red. The stinger lays something inside when it wounds you, something soft-faced that chews and burrows with stroking fingers beneath your stretching skin.

The revised and expanded edition of Petty Gods is now available, so here are a few of the entries I wrote for it back before this site even existed.

(I mainly just want to show off bigger versions of Rose’s illustrations because they’re excellent. Everything but the goat is hers.)

 

 

 

The Divine Worm, Mother of the Stillborn

 

 

Symbol: An x-ray style depiction of an earthworm holding multiple foetuses along the length of its body.

Talisman: A gold piece stamped with a newborn’s face, eroded by tears.

Alignment: Neutral

Movement: N/A

Armor Class: 9

Hit Points (Hit Dice): Randomly determined (Roll d20 HD)

Attacks: Special

Damage: Special

Save: As Fighter of level equal to HD rolled.

Morale: 12

Hoard Class: 8,888gp, d% will melt the moment they’re taken into sunlight.

XP: 2x amount of stillborns spilt from the Divine Worm’s amniotic sac.

 

The Divine Worm, patron Mother of Miscarried and Stillborn Children, invoked by grieving families, worshipped by others for reasons that are their own.

A coin is cast bearing an image of the child and melted in a boiling pot in offering to the Divine Worm, beseeching her to carry the child in the beyond.

 

Manifestations of the Divine Worm are sometimes found in fragrant caverns below sites of plague or infanticide.

In form the Worm’s body is like that of a giant hairless and eyeless mole, lined with damp axolotl legs and a toadlike mouth. Pendulous breasts appear almost at random on its flanks and legs and a swollen amniotic sac sprouts over its lower back and hindquarters, within the sac you can see neither flesh nor bone, it sinks forever. Floating calmly amidst the rotten amber fluid are more infants and foetuses than you can count.

The Worm sits atop a gleaming pile of gold coins, swaying lichen and moss hangs from the cavern roof above it.

 

The Worm never attacks, never defends itself. It sits there with its mouth open, hundreds of infantile heads emerging and weeping in chorus even as you hack into its flesh, the sound is almost soothing. Every round save vs. Poison or suckle from one of its breasts. The sac squelches and heaves as you drink its amber nectar. You age d6 years of life unlived.

 

If the worm is killed its sac will burst, spilling 253 stillborns per HD about your feet, there are so many more than you imagined.

 

 

 

The Lady of Tasks Forgotten

 

Symbol: A bottle filled with the faces of dying ants and locusts pressed against the glass.

Talisman: N/A. Most of the time her adherents aren’t even aware they’re adhering.

Alignment: Chaotic

Movement: 120′ (40′)

Armor Class: 9

Hit Points (Hit Dice): 16hp (2 HD)

Attacks: Special

Damage: Special

Save: M20

Morale: 12

Hoard Class: See final paragraph.

XP: 1,000. 546,000 if you’re the one to kill her.

 

You settle in and try to block out the din of the tavern, contemplating your next step, weighing the options.

A tankard slides beneath your nose, the frothing ale spills slightly onto your hand.

There’s nothing extraordinary about the waifish woman who put it there, she’s pale and without a curve, or is she terribly obese under that dress? You’re too preoccupied to really notice.

She smiles pleasantly but emptily, “You look worried about something, burdened, why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you so much.”

And you do.

You tell her everything, every twist every turn, you tell her everything there is to know about what you’re trying to achieve. And you do feel better for it. You feel fantastic, purged and light, and someone has left a full tankard of ale here on the table for you. Wait, what is this place?

 

The Lady of Tasks Forgotten can be called on by those who have lost their way, those that feel there was something important they were meant to do but can no longer recall. The elixir they prepare probably shouldn’t be consumed under normal circumstances, distilled liquor and locusts flavoured with datura, poured into a flask with live winter ants, already kept in the flask for days and belly-deep in secreted poison.

If they survive drinking this concoction they will remember the task without fail, but it is rarely their own, and they will never understand that it never was. The Lady has many tasks to remember.

 

You could likely kill the Lady quite easily if you desired, but how would you know her?

If you find a way to summon and bind her, her flesh softly broils and churns, melting in places while expanding in others, forming impossible beauty then rotting like a bed sore. She looks on you with such sympathy, you have so many troubles.

Every round that you are near her in this state you will forget something, save vs. Magic for it to be something unimportant.

Use the table below for important things or pick something the character will really miss.

 

	I'm sure I'm forgetting something..
2d6
2	You forget why you're here, who you are, you don't know who these people are, or this thing floating in front of you, you want to go home, you don't know where it is. You'll only find out if you kill her.
3-5	Correct use of your weapon eludes you, -4 to hit with melee/ranged weapons depending on what you were using from now on.
6-8	You lose all memory of a random companion. Everyone else seems to know them, she must have done something to their minds, you should kill this imposter before they can do any harm.
9-11	You can no longer speak in a common tongue, you understand it when others speak it, but you're oblivious to the fact that you're replying to them in another language entirely.
12	You lose all memory of the flora and fauna of the world you live in, everything is strange or terrifying. The first time you see a swamp will be interesting.

She has no gold to steal, no relics, and whoever kills her will absorb every task she still held, convinced beyond question that the tasks are their own, crippled by overwhelming responsibility.

 

 

 

The Turquoise Idol of Communion

 

 

Name: Turquoise Idol of Communion

Symbol: Imagine the purest light and assurance, it looks like that.

Talisman: A rough stone cylindrical idol, carved with intricate scrolling symbols.

Alignment: Lawful

Movement: 180′ (60′)

Armor Class: 9

Hit Points (Hit Dice): 10hp (1 HD +1 per being absorbed)

Attacks: Special

Damage: Special

Save: As Fighter of level equal to HD, immune to all Magic.

Morale: 12

Hoard Class: 500 river-polished pebbles of turquoise inside its belly per HD.

XP: 4,000 per HD at the moment of its untimely demise.

 

They hand you a piece of broken stone, the outside is timeworn and dark, graven with symbols, while the alluring turquoise surface within glistens like an adhesive.

They speak of four joining pieces that were lost, they say that if you reconstruct the idol it is told to strengthen your mortal shell, to unite you with a greater power.

 

The inner surface of the idol is dry to your touch but when you join it with another piece you find yourself unable to force them apart. Every piece amplifies the stench of the swamp wafting from it.

You find and join the final piece and place it before you, ready to receive its power. A wet blue skin seeps from the fine cracks on its surface, smothering it and expanding as a toad in the shape of a man, with five hanging arms protruding from its body. Its skin glistens and it wishes to join with you.

 

The only attack it will make is a wrestling check, either by leaping at you or with its 10′ tongue. The moment it takes hold you can feel your skin incorporating into its body, sucking you in. Take a -2 penalty to your rolls every round, taking damage equal to your penalty if you manage to escape, and incorporating into the toad completely if you haven’t escaped after 3 rounds. With its increased mass the toad gains a HD, sprouts another arm and a further bonus to wrestling checks, and its tongue grows another 5′.

If you hit the toad in melee your weapon sticks in its flesh, make a Strength check next round to get it back. The toad will try to grab anyone that comes near enough, or with its tongue if no one is already in its mouth, but won’t move until it has finished incorporating those already joined to it.

 

You will never completely remove its flesh from anything it touched.

 

 

 

The Moss-Worn Goat

 

Name: The Moss-Worn Goat, bearer of Sterility

Symbol: The head of a goat crying tears of sperm.

Talisman: A carven wood phallus, left to grow moss and fungus.

Alignment: Neutral

Movement: 120′ (40′)

Armor Class: 5

Hit Points (Hit Dice): 46hp (7 HD)

Attacks: N/A

Damage: N/A

Save: M22

Morale: 8

Hoard Class: That depends on how long you keep him around.

XP: 4,000

 

The Moss-Worn Goat can be called upon to dry up the seed of men seeking it or those whom they wish to inflict it upon.

Offerings of gold are left in the damp parts of the woods with a phallus carved from a discarded branch, hidden by rotting hollow logs. Some desire temporary affliction, but unless they save vs. Magic they are permanently sterilised.

 

The Goat himself will be found in a dark hovel of a cavern, sweating amidst lichen and mounded monoliths of dirt, sprawled on the floor, moaning mournfully in a reverberating howl.

Below the huge malformed head and horns of a goat his body is human, and the whole time you watch him he never stops masturbating, shuddering intermittently with spasms that force enormous single golden sperm to spurt from his cock onto an already squirming pile, creaking like bending metal.

 

If you attack him he doesn’t know how to defend himself, he doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t stop masturbating. Eventually he will try to flee, leaving a golden trail of creaking sperm as his crooked body stumbles away.

 

 

 

Deiphagous Maggot

 

Name: Deiphagous Maggot

Alignment: As the god it currently serves. It’s nothing if not helpful.

Movement: 120′ (40′)

Armor Class: 9

Hit Points (Hit Dice): 24hp (4 HD)

Attacks: Wrap, d4 needle patches

Damage: 3d4, d4 each

Save: M23

Morale: 8

Hoard: Find a wondrous item table and roll on it.

XP: 1,200

 

The bloated body of the maggot squirms through the air, contracting and expanding towards you, several feet from the ground in deliberate, hypnotic movements.

It draws itself up like a snake, a patch of glistening needles extend from beneath the rear of its body, supporting it before you.

Mouths cover the underside of its body, one speaks for every emotion, there are many mouths. Eyes filled with broiling red fog are held within them, winking out and opening elsewhere as each begins to speak.

It is not the nature of the maggot to harm the god it serves, but when it dies the maggot will swim amongst its flesh, supping on the decay of divinity. Of course the maggot hungers, but the longer a god lives, the more fervently it is worshipped, the sweeter its flesh. You see its conundrum.

It feels you’re here to spoil the meal it is cultivating.

 

Static physical barriers mean nothing to the maggot, it slides in and out of them like reality, be careful not to fall into a hole that isn’t there. Sharp swinging metal is harder to account for.

In combat the maggot will try to wrap itself around you with gnawing mouths and squirm away in one fluid motion, leaving you like a ringbarked tree.

If caught or cornered its skin bursts with patches of bristling needles.

 

The maggot’s digestion is slow, if it is killed there is a 50% chance of its ruptured belly releasing the power of a god it has fed on. Have you killed a god lately? That one. Otherwise roll or flip to a random godling in this book and inflict their wrath.

 

 

 

Shed Godling Skin Suit

 

Some godlings grow as their following does, sloughing off their old skin to make way for a glorious new facade.

The translucent leather stitched into this full-body suit still responds to praise and worship, either of its wearer or of the godling who shed it.

The skin will allow one use of an ability of the godling it came from within a period of time equal to hours you spend in ritual worship beforehand.

Pick a god, roll or flip to one randomly in this book, or use whatever horrible thing these abilities came from. Roll randomly or worship twice as long if you want to pick.

1. Swollen pustular mounds swell from the neck of the suit, allowing you to expel boiling black bile as a 6′ ranged attach or a 90° spray within 3′, bypassing armour and dealing 2d6 damage. If you can bite someone you may vomit directly into their bloodstream. Save or Die.

2. If someone makes a successful melee attack against you, you can allow their weapon and arm to pass through your body, trapping them. The arm will need to be cut away, but whatever is left on the suit will be absorbed soon enough.

3. You leech the life out of anything organic within 6′, regaining d6hp. Roll under Constitution or secrete it back out in noisome streams.

4. You regurgitate d4 phlegm-coloured tiny men. Lose 1hp for each tiny man and roll for their loyalty. Every round you want them to do something roll loyalty, you may need to think of incentives. The only way you can regain those hit points is by swallowing the tiny men.

The skin’s AC 8 improves by 1 for every person that worships the wearer like a disciple, as the skin flushes with life and moves in a distracting, unnatural way.

If you gain 14 followers you will fuse with the skin, becoming a malformed bastard demigod. You will not like it.

Back in this post I mentioned testing out new Mystic rules, and the new religion we made up based around a Florian Bertmer illustration entitled “Order of the Seven Serpents”.

Well I’m pretty sure I’ve smoothed them out to a point where they’re both easy and flexible enough for public consumption, so here you go.

 

The actual cards are below (I print them on A4 card, punch out the holes and bind them to make a little book), but this is the general idea:

• Mystics no longer have set spell lists.
• Instead, they can attempt to make anything happen that they think their god would be in to (though there are general guidelines called Liturgies that make some things harder to make happen than others).
• After announcing what they want, they make a 4d6 roll on the Invocation table, which can be altered by using Favour points that they’ve earned by doing appropriately religious things.
• I got over LotFP’s dreary nihilistic “there are no gods just delusion”, it’s much more fun if the things Mystics are worshipping are actually real.
  There are still going to be mishaps, but instead of being the Mystic’s delusion wavering or their god suddenly getting pissed off for no good reason, it’ll be because their god doesn’t really understand what is appropriate. So if Roy’s snake worshipper Tipanius fudges a roll in the middle of combat and gets Inopportune Favour and falls to his knees vomiting an unending torrent of slick adult snakes, the Seven Serpents will be like, “Oh haha what, you didn’t want to give birth to a thousand snakes from your mouth right now? Haha whoops sorry love you xoxo.”
• There will be specific spells that Mystics can find, where they just have to use a number of Favour points rather than rolling, but those will be things to go out and find from different cults and libraries and stuff.

 

Click to make readable.

 

And Malpractice is still a thing so here’s the table for the Seven Serpents:

 

 

d20	Malpractice - Order of the Seven Serpents
1	A black serpent slithers its shimmering body from the target, inflicting a further d4 damage as it emerges.
2	The ritual succeeds, but the target's skin becomes progressively tighter, causing an increasing -1 penalty to physical rolls every Turn, after 3 Turns their movement halves, after 6 Turns they will need to shed their skin.
3	Snake eggs form in the wound or wherever else seems suitably awkward, and the target can't be mystically healed or cured until they hatch in 2d8 hours or are accidentally destroyed. If they hatch, the target is immediately healed of all ailments and can make a one-time appeal to the Seven Serpents. If they are intentionally destroyed, a venom-dripping sludge snake forms from the yolk and attacks whoever is responsible.
4	The ritual succeeds, but an incredibly long snake tongue permanently glides in and out of the site of the wound (or other part of the body if there was no wound). It is perfectly linked to the target's sensory system, tasting the air for them, making it harder to be surprised, and easier to find things by scent.
5	For the next day the target cannot bear to keep their eyes open in bright light, but with their eyes closed can feel vibrations and sense nearby heat.
6	The ritual succeeds, but the target's skin grows dry and cracked, flaking away to reveal beautiful iridescent scales. They find themselves able to squeeze and compress themselves through anything big enough to fit their head.
7	Part of the target's skin peels back as if it were trying to renew what lies beneath, but all that lies beneath is bleeding muscle. Take d6 damage.
8	The ritual succeeds, but a churning grows in the target's stomach, inflating it, until a month later they spontaneously give birth to a stream of juvenile snakes from whichever orifice seems most convenient. This will happen every month.
9	The ritual succeeds, but tissue-eating venom bubbles up from the target's body and consumes d6hp of the Mystic's flesh before diluting.
10	The ritual succeeds, but part of the target's body withers and falls away to enhance their sleek silhouette, roll a d6: 1: An entire arm. 2: An entire hand. 3-4: d6 fingers, target's pick. 5: An entire foot. 6: An entire leg.
11	The target's saliva becomes envenomed for d4 Turns, and they'll need to let it drool out to avoid poisoning themselves by swallowing.
12	The ritual succeeds, but the target finds that a rather phallic stubby snake grows from their body. They accidentally discover that rubbing the snake and causing it to cough up coagulated venom causes it to diminish somewhat, though it seems the process would need to be repeated at least d20 times before the snake phallus clears up.
13	Gnarled curling horns twist out of the back of the target's skull and a furry, huffing goat's face emerges from their neck, opening its mouth to vomit slick red baby snakes down the target's back. Target must save vs. Poison to stop it continuing to birth and permanently stealing half of their hit points. If they stop it birthing it will remain as it is and bleat and vomit in surprise any time someone sneaks up on them.
14	The target's torso elongates, their legs shrivel and twist about one another, fusing, scales push out like growing fingernails, leaving the target with the lashing lower body of a giant serpent.
15	The target's blood turns cold, they'll need to find ways to keep warm in cold environments away from the sun to avoid losing all physical bonuses and moving at half speed.
16	The target notices small glistening tongues flicker intermittently from slits in the tips of the fingers of one arm. Over the next few days their fingers fatten, muscle in the arm turns fatty and their bones seem to break down, their fingernails fall away and scored lines open over the top of their fingers and up to their shoulder. Five serpents dwell within the arm and move it in sinuous curls, emerging up through the slits to let the arm casing slip off and hang limp to allow them to strike. Charisma check to call them out, granting 5 bite attacks, roll on Poison table for each successful bite. They'll stay active as long as you make a Charisma check every Round, but will spend a Turn getting back into your arm after the first failure. 12AC/DB, on a successful melee hit an extra snake is affected for every 2 points above target. If any of them are killed you don't need to make Charisma checks while attacking the thing responsible.
17	Anything within 30' that has eyes must save vs. Magic, otherwise small golden snakes push out from their eyes and break them like eggs, falling to the ground in a pool of yolk and occular fluid. More eggs will grow in the sockets in d12 hours, and can be turned back into eyes if the Mystic successfully heals them. If the Mystic fails, birth more snakes. Repeat.
18	The ritual succeeds, but musty hair grows in patches over their body, and two bony nubs can be felt on their skull. The target must save vs. Poison every day to prevent the condition progressing, taking a penalty to physical rolls for every stage it advances. To completely recover, the target must make 3 saves in a row, if they fail a save it regresses to its initial condition, and if they fail 3 times in a row they complete their transformation into an ordinary goat with a lit candle on its forehead that never burns out. Any healing from a Servant of the Seven Serpents during this time will actually progress the condition.
19	The Mystic can feel something digging at their mind and must save vs. Poison. If they fail their body is torn apart from within by emerging singing bluebirds that swirl into the sky and fall upon all those around them.
20	The ritual succeeds, but the next time they sleep the target must save vs. Poison. If they fail, their body slowly transmutes and slithers away throughout the night until there is nothing left of them but a dry outer skin.

 

The thing I like most about these rules is that I can have Mystics of different religions running around that actual feel and play like they have different religions, without having to do, like, any work. It pretty much just happens.

 

If you’d like to make your own you can download the InDesign file for the cards from Penny Pamphlets or click here, and spend 5 minutes altering the Liturgies and Inherent Abilities to whatever religion you like.

 

And if you can’t be bothered actually writing a Malpractice table beforehand you can just use this template and make up the specifics as you need them:

 

 

d20	Malpractice Template
1	Target takes damage.
2	Ritual succeeds, but target is subject to an ongoing debilitation. (roll on Duration table)
3	Target is subject to an ongoing effect or alteration, no mystical healing or cures until it ends. (roll on Duration table)
4	Ritual succeeds, but target is subject to a permanent effect or alteration.
5	Target is subject to an ongoing debilitation. (roll on Duration table)
6	Ritual succeeds, but target is subject to a permanent effect or alteration.
7	Target takes damage.
8	Ritual succeeds, but target is subject to a permanent effect or alteration.
9	The ritual succeeds, but the Mystic takes damage.
10	Ritual succeeds, but target is subject to a permanent effect or alteration.
11	Target is subject to an ongoing effect or alteration. (roll on Duration table)
12	Ritual succeeds, but target is subject to a permanent effect or alteration until they perform a task to remove it.
13	Major mishap involving detrimental alteration, loss of hp or stats, etc.
14	Target is subject to a major permanent effect or alteration.
15	Target is subject to a permanent effect or alteration.
16	Target is subject to a permanent effect or alteration.
17	Area affect that everyone within 30' must make a save to avoid.
18	The ritual succeeds, but the target is subject to a progressing condition. The target must save vs. Poison every day to prevent the condition progressing, taking a penalty to physical rolls for every stage it advances. To completely recover, the target must make 3 saves in a row, if they fail a save it regresses to its initial condition, and if they fail 3 times in a row the condition results in their spectacular death. Any healing from a Mystic of the same religion during this time will actually progress the condition.
19	Mystic must save vs. Poison or die.
20	The ritual succeeds, but the target must save vs. Poison the next night or die.

Whhh okay, deep breath, this is going to be a big one.

M. John Harrison’s Viriconium was one of the big inspirations that brought Cörpathium into existence, and one of the things that I loved most about those stories was that the city was never the same; places move, facts shift, but it remains Viriconium. So that’s something that I wanted for mine, a city that could be destroyed and brought back without just hitting a reset button, and is why my magic mishap and city encounter tables are so gleefully full of potentially world shattering stuff: I’ve never been worried about having to start again, it’s fun if everything gets torn down.

But at the same time, I’m not writing fiction here, I’m writing things that need to be used. Actually throwing everything out and starting from scratch would be an insane thing and a huge waste of my time.

So, my answer was to write up twenty potential boroughs, a method for randomly generating the entire city with a dice drop, and conditional variations based on what boroughs end up existing and which dice generated them.

First you take a 7 dice set and 5 other d20’s in your hands (or more if you like go nuts) and drop them in front of you, trying to keep them reasonably close together.

Each dice represents a different borough. Their position doesn’t necessarily show the physical layout of the city, just how the boroughs relate to one another.

You take the points of the shape on the top of each dice (well, just the points for the d4, and for the d10’s pretend they have a triangle on top), and if that leads to another dice, those boroughs are accessible to each other, which ends up looking like this:

Now the numbers on each dice relate to a different borough on the table below. Go through the 7 dice set first, beginning with the d20, then move to the highest number of the other d20’s. If you get a duplicate number, replace it with the next lowest number not already taken by a smaller dice, and if all the lower numbers are already taken, roll on the Additional Undefined Boroughs tables.

(Clicking any of the borough names will take you to its full description further down the page.)

Result	Boroughs
1	Artist's Quarter
2	The Rookery of Van Möldus
3	Temple District
4	The Twin Nests: Plateau of Plague, Plateau of Time
5	The Sporous Apiary
6	Lilacs
7	The Wheel of Gold
8	Von Goethe Gardens
9	The Crystal Ponds
10	Flesh Market
11	The Sulphurous Spires (of the Serpent)
12	The Library Eternal
13	The Old Folk
14	The Sprawling Tower
15	Plague Zone
16	The Black Web
17	The Blood-Red Palace of the Godless
18	The Demiurge Pit, Crater of Life
19	The Device
20	Manifestation of the Monolith in the Dark

There are also some constants regarding Cörpathium:

Constants

The Fogwalk Replaces the dice nearest to the bottom. The Corpusmilch canal (and Möldenghast Blvd either side of it) then flows through to the furthest dice.

The Emerald Pit Replaces the additional d20 nearest to the centre of the group. Roll on the Additional Undefined Boroughs tables for its surroundings.

The Howling Spire of Time If the Twin Nests do not exist, place the Howling Spire of Time in whichever borough you see fit.

Chance of Deicidium per Borough POOR boroughs have a 1 in 6 chance. MIDDLING boroughs have a 4 in 6 chance. RICH boroughs have a 5 in 6 chance.

Guilds for Everything If there's one thing Cörpathians love, it's organisations. The Candle-Makers Guild, Seamstress Union, The Baker's Cooperative, the Rag and Bone Guild, Order of Lost Letters. Numerous guilds for everything. Chances are that no matter who you talk to, they're part of some kind of sect, no matter how small.

So then things look like this:

Cörpathium’s government and law enforcement depends on what boroughs actually ended up existing in this iteration of the city, so you start at the top of these tables and pick the first one that applies:

Conditionals: Government (select the first that applies)	Conditionals: Order (select the first that applies)
If there is no Temple District, but the Blood-Red Palace of the Godless exists, Cörpathium is ruled by the Godless and the Childlike Oracle, the Lamb, Eater of Eternity.	If the Blood-Red Palace of the Godless exists every single borough will have a Deicidium, and the Godless are responsible for the order and protection of Cörpathium.
If there is no Temple District, or the Blood-Red Palace of the Godless, but The Old Folk exist, Cörpathium is ruled by that which crawled up from the Emerald Pit so long ago, and the Old Folk live.	If Cörpathium is ruled by the vast thing that crawled up from the Emerald Pit, Cörpathium is guarded by the Order of a Thousand Eyes. Replace the Deicidiums with Watch Houses and re-roll for each borough that doesn't have one.
If there is no Temple District, or the Blood-Red Palace of the Godless, but there is a Manifestation of the Monolith in the Dark, it is no manifestation, Cörpathium is ruled by the Monolith and those that speak for it.	If Cörpathium is ruled by the Monolith in the Dark, Cörpathium is watched over by the Silent Ones. Remove any Deicidiums, the Silent Ones have no home, they simply are.
If there is no Temple District, Blood-Red Palace of the Godless, or the Wheel of Gold, the Haugroten trading family own all of the Fogwalk and hold a constant seat within the Corvuscult, as well as appointing a trio of Haugroten Sons to watch over each borough.	If there are no more than three Deicidiums and the Corvuscult are in power, the city guard is made up of the private mercenary armies of the Corvuscult families, the Whoredens. Remove any Deicidiums and place a Whore Den near each Corvuscult Family's home.
Otherwise Cörpathium is ruled by the Corvuscult.	Otherwise Cörpathium is guarded by the Godless.

Which in this case means that Cörpathium is ruled by the Corvuscult and guarded by the Godless.

The Emerald Pit (in the centre there) still needs to be in an actual borough, which is where the Additional Undefined Boroughs tables come in:

d6	Additional Undefined Boroughs
1	Poor.
2	Poor.
3	Middling.
4	Middling.
5	Rich.
6	Rich.

d12	Name: Poor	d12	General Environment: Poor
1	The Warren	1	Infested with fungus and an unnaturally large amount of insects. At least there's something to eat.
2	Swinehaven	2	Ramshackle buildings overgrown with plantlife.
3	Crone Spawn Commons	3	Oily, sludgy slum, terrific brewhouses.
4	Black Rose Hill	4	Enormous kludge idols to strange gods are erected in the streets, on rooftops, in the middle of public houses.
5	Corpsewallow	5	Built around an open sewer, algae-covered stone hewn steps leading down. Easy access to Cörpathium's subterranean for the Kanalsknecht, easy access to Cörpathium for things that live below.
6	Red Rookery	6	Inhabited below the streets in the sewers and tunnels and carven halls, the lavish buildings above abandoned to superstition. (roll on Rich tables for the borough above)
7	The Drowning Mass	7	A single monumental swaying tower continually built upwards from scavenged scrap, erected in the midst of another borough.
8	The Scales	8	The pages of religious texts and pamphlets plaster the walls.
9	Bladderrot Downs	9	Carrion birds wait patiently on cracked tile rooftops, the people throw birdseed about them as they walk to no avail.
10	Syringa Vulgaris	10	Thick layers of soot coat every visible surface, communal fires are kept burning in the streets near alley entrances.
11	Roach Bottom	11	The buildings are well-kept but the people are anaemic, a blue-and-white walled mansion of turrets and balconies looms in the centre of it all.
12	The Pit	12	Leeches. The people walk around with giant fucking leeches gorging on their blood, letting them grow big and fat enough to cook like some kind of nightmare blood sausage. On the plus side all this leech treatment means they're all surprisingly healthy, if a bit light-headed.

d12	Name: Middling	d12	General Environment: Middling
1	The Flower Bed	1	The door of every building is carved with a mass of tiny figures and the people walk mice on leashes of string.
2	Bloodvessel	2	Fruit vines grow up the faces of buildings, bats are everywhere, heavy round seeds underfoot are the foremost cause of injury and guano is scraped from the streets.
3	Liberius Waltz	3	An abnormal amount of lanterns both on the street and hanging from building walls, lamplighters work in packs here.
4	Blackmark	4	Aqueducts bring water to an excessive number of overflowing fountains, the streets are constantly flooded.
5	Crowsfoot	5	Brightly-coloured pennons hang from the balconies of every house, inked with various poems, some like wards of protection, some regarding potently vapid nonsense.
6	White Walls	6	The streets are paved with several layers of skulls, their brainpan supporting foot traffic, supposedly covering something more concerning below.
7	Littledeath Point	7	The walls are plated with thin pressed sheets of bronze depicting battles that never happened, great romances that never were, fables taken deathly seriously.
8	The Festival	8	Shambling buildings leaning out over the streets to drape silks and lanterns over the heads of those below, waiting for the next celebration to begin.
9	Blackfriar's	9	The entire borough subscribes to a sect that forbids cleaning of any kind or severity, but the craftsmen are some of the best in the city.
10	The Gallows	10	The buildings are tall and stern and spiked as if previously used for some dastardly purpose, inhabited now by gaily dressed dandies and sighing madams.
11	Tenderloins	11	Soft pink curtains hang in every window, beautiful terrace houses huddle close and hide the activity in the alleys behind, an enormous marble statue depicts a young woman willingly offering her thigh while a starveling dog chews on it.
12	The Bowery	12	The ground is sour, like a marshy mangrove mud flats type deal. The entire borough is built on one big stilted platform over the top of it. You can see crabs and breeding insects through the gaps.

d12	Name: Rich	d12	General Environment: Rich
1	Dulwich Hill	1	The buildings are all painted in solid pastel shades, hand-lettered black script above the doors proclaiming the owner or purpose.
2	Weaver's Cross	2	Every roof is a spire, it's like a patch of needles threatening the sky.
3	Báthory	3	The cobblestones are carved like the beautiful faces of youth, scrubbed daily to shine by hump-backed cleaners.
4	Yellowbrick Court	4	Clean white walls enscrawled with symbols in living green moss, constantly trimmed and watered.
5	Moonpond Waltz	5	Houses raised up amongst an absurd walled-in zoo, the occupants accompanied by a small entourage of armoured handlers wielding mancatchers and padded tower shields whenever they wish to go for a stroll.
6	The Old Rat Ward	6	Monumental houses of dark stone arranged in the sign of the Yellow Queen, dedicated to pursuit of her knowledge and happiness.
7	The Spiral Rise	7	The walls are all coated with dripping pink wax, like a thousand candles had been lit around the parapets and allowed to burn down.
8	Copperpin Peak	8	Rich red droplets of blood always seem haphazardly splashed about on the streets, porcelain-pale and just as smooth, but if the sombre polished-wood faces of the houses have a tale to tell their lips are tightly sealed.
9	Blue Points	9	Every house has a goat on a running chain, allowing them a good 10ft reign around the front of the building. They're like a status symbol, would you look at the horns on that.
10	Willowood	10	The entire borough is like one big theatre, the sets are absurd, everyone acts as if they were auditioning for a part with exaggerated melodramatic flair, don't block.
11	Dartmoor	11	All of the major buildings are ceramic, curiously shaped, decorated by images of unseen flora, with vulgar yellow stone staircases that spiral down into the earth.
12	Featherwort Downs	12	Birds in cages line the streets, hanging from balconies and street lamps, attached to doors and trained to sing a certain song when a visitor shakes them.

Which I roll on and get a poor borough, The Drowning Mass: Inhabited below the streets in the sewers and tunnels and carven halls, the lavish buildings above abandoned to superstition.

Which means I need to roll a rich borough to go on top of it and get Báthory: The cobblestones are carved like the beautiful faces of youth, scrubbed daily to shine by hump-backed cleaners.

Which is awesome.

And a great city needs great entrances, so here’s a few that can be put around anywhere that makes sense (well except for The Tributary which should be put at the opposite end to the Fogwalk so that it can be next to the Corpusmilch as it enters the city):

Entrances

The Tributary An expanse of open-palmed beckoning arms, their perfect marble skin marred by patches of crustose red lichen, reaching out around a gaping entranceway astride the Corpusmilch river. Entrance requires a gift or action dependant on the cycle of the moon. Nothing may pass through the Tributary during the full moon.

The Common Gate Six severed goat heads hang from the walls along the gateway, hung with wooden charms. A low keening crawls from their throats and their nostrils flow with a lurid pink mucus when something unnatural moves in their presence. The heads need to be prepared and replaced weekly as they rot.

Fishwall Gullet Gaping fish-like lips emerging from the wall, hewn from the same stone, carved within like a cavernous throat, an inviting tongue lolled out, waiting to swallow you whole. Attended by the Fishwives, it's best to treat them kind or you may find the mouth on the other side reluctant to open, the way behind you closing.

The Oracle Gate The undying head of a little girl sits in an iron cage suspended from a lantern post, limp red hair hanging now almost to the ground. Each group of travellers leaving by her gate must ask a question or curse their own journey. Roll a d6. 1-3 she answers your question true 4-6 she spouts prophecy unavoidable Each group of travellers entering by her gate must answer a question of her own, and if they do not know, must seek out the answer before the moon's next phase. Lie to the little girl and face the laughing living light which spills from her mouth.

Which after I think maybe half an hour including messing around in Photoshop, gives you a city that looks like this:

The actual dice that generated each borough also determines another variation, which you’ll find in the Dice Variance tables below. I’m not going to list all of the ones I got here, but among other things it did result in a huge flesh giant being under construction, and the in-vogue religion being Yoon-Quiun, most hated enemy of Roy’s snake worshipping Mystic, which I think is pretty funny.

Anyway here are the full borough descriptions. Really most of these could be used as cities all by themselves, they don’t have to be in Cörpathium. In fact after generating the city above for our current game, one of the first things I did was decide that the the Sulphurous Spires wrapped around the Demiurge Pit would be a whole other city to visit.

The Additional Undefined Boroughs could also be used for extra neighbourhoods outside the main walls or to pop up unexpectedly if you travel down an unfamiliar path or whatever you want.

Really, I’m incredibly happy with this, it feels like nose to tail cooking in RPG form and I love it.

Make your own Cörpathium.

Read the rest…

We’ve been playing regularly the last few weeks which has been amazing, I’m not going to do full play reports because I don’t got that kinda time but here’s a quick rundown of some things that happened since last time:

• After all the murder and screaming, Tipanius started nailing the chosen of Yoon-Quiun to the town wall while Thoth-Mora set the house full of previous murder victims on fire, then sacrificed his silk rope to escape from a back window to avoid all the concerned townspeople milling around.
• They then broke into the giant boar pen, made enough successful Naturalis rolls to saddle up about three of them before the guards got to the gate, then Tipanius asked his snake gods politely to constrict two of them and Malatesta charged at the last one on a giant boar with his zweihander levelled over its head like a lance and rolled a fucking 20, skewering him through the mouth and charing onwards until he crashed through the rickety town wall, knocking down a good portion of it either side, and they rode away with all the other boars following them out and leaving the town of Yellow Watch to its spidery doom.
• They named their giant boars Piggy-Wiggy, Hamish, and Dr. Grunts.
• They travelled for a while until they found a nice doily seller called Gretchen Horrovich resting on a caravan with a broken wheel after having her screaming horse eaten by something during the night. They quickly made friends and hitched up a boar so that they could follow her to the trade town of Blackpond which I made up on the spot and turned out to be awesome.
• They wanted to get Florian a proper peg-leg instead of a candlestick, and some kind of harness made for the wizard Felix Longworm so that they can carry him on someone’s back now that he pretty much has no limbs, so I rolled to see how good some local craftsman was (when it comes up I roll a d6 and 6 is unbelievably horrible), and rolled a 1, so soon enough they’d put an order in with Edvard Oman which consisted of:
  1. A prosthetic leg that contains a wheellock pistol that shoots out of the heel, with rotating barrels of pre-loaded shot and powder in the calf that spin around when the foot is pushed forward, as well as several hidden storage compartments and a flanged mace on the heel so that if it comes down to it, Florian can take off his leg and beat something to death with it.
  2. Tipanius’s wavy bronze sword and two wavy bronze daggers to be re-forged into two wavy bronze short swords that can be joined at the pommel.
  3. A badarse armoured harness for Felix to wear so that he can be strapped onto someone’s back, that comes complete with a bookrest for his spellbook, a small attached bowl for the preparation of spell components, a little claw thing to be attached to what’s left of his right arm so that he can turn pages, and a lever-activated blunderbus that flips out at the groin.
• Then his high-pitched apprentice gave them a crutch for Florian and a wheelbarrow for Felix and bid them good day.
• Florian didn’t have enough coin for his order so he asked Gretchen if she knew anyone he could sell his ruby too, and the only person she knew was a jeweller named Alistair de Mantajo, her ex-lover whom she left because he was taking too many drugs.
• My performance as Alistair was my favourite NPC I’ve ever done and I’ll miss him.
• Alistair kept sniffing and crooning and told Florian the ruby was practically worthless, then later that night sent his two goons to mug Florian outside the House of the Purple Haze, a tavern that Florian had not yet entered because he was scared of the friendly brawl happening inside even though everyone but him and Thoth-Mora had already plowed their way through (Florian wheeled Felix straight through in his barrow and got free top-shelf drinks with straws in them for the trouble). Sophie and Emma ummed and ahhed about what to do until Emma decided that Thoth-Mora would run into the tavern screaming “rape”, but then when Florian followed him in the brawlers thought that he was the rapist and lifted him off the floor by his throat until Thoth-Mora pranced over and told them it was actually the two guys out in the alley he was worried about, who then get beaten to a pulp by most everyone from the bar.
• Gretchen was drunk watching the whole thing and after everyone drinking up to her level they all decided that the best way to get Alistair back would be to go to the stable where their boars were held, fill Felix’s wheelbarrow with boar poo, then dump it in front of Alistair’s house and fool him into coming out and slipping in it.
• Gretchen danced around with a lantern and her shirt lifted up and it totally worked, then the beaten-up goons turned up so she shattered the lantern in front of them and they ran laughing all the way back to the House of the Purple Haze.
• Obediah’s teeth started falling out because he’d contracted Gob Rot so he went to see Yeb-Shoth Shub, thereafter known as Dr. Shub M.D., who first of all tried to cure it by pouring mercury into his eyes, which made all his other teeth fall out, then cured it properly and recommended a good dentist, who was contracted to cast a set of sharp metal teeth.
• Obediah wanted to buy some new clothes to make himself feel better, rolled on my fashion table, and got “An elaborately decorated bustle sprouting from their hips, overlapping organic spiralled layers of silk making it look like an absurd voluptuous cocoon. And it is, carefully chosen so as to hatch a swarm of butterflies at the perfect moment of the night for maximum visual effect.”
• Rose immediately decided that Obediah had now found his calling as a cross-dresser, so we upgraded him from 0-level swamp scum to a level 1 Specialist with a cross-dressing skill, and used our Cat Name Generator for his new name. Muffin McTavish.
• At some point we decided that not only does Felix have a beard so wispy that it’s constantly floating around in the non-existent wind, but that his pubes are exactly the same and they hang out the side of his wizard undies and sometimes his pubes and beard touch in the non-existent wind.
• Thoth-Mora wanted to buy some good drugs to help learn how to cast the spell One Thousand Hogs which turned out to be in his twin sister’s head, and Obediah wanted to get tore up, so they went to see the only drug user they knew; Alistair de Mantajo.
• He hadn’t seen anyone other than Gretchen during the boar poo situation, and Muffin McTavish used her new (still toothless) wiles to talk down Alistair’s finders fee, then handed over the coin and agreed to meet him that night at the House of the Purple Haze when he had the drugs. Alistair was really, really taken with Muffin.
• Felix decided to make a speech in the trading square to try to convince someone to join them for the sole purpose of carrying a limbless wizard around, so Malatesta held him up, said “BEHOLD! THE WIZARD!”, and Michael gave the greatest fucking speech I’ve ever heard and I got all hot and sweaty from laughing and I wish I had recorded it and on top of that he made an amazing Charisma check and got his pick of the awed crowd. He now has a girl called Constance de  la Fuente of the Verdigris Plume, who has a sweet bronze-feathered conquistador helmet and a sword and thinks he is just the most amazing thing in the whole world oh my god.
• Florian found an alchemist friend and bought a supply of specimen jars and preservatives for the Feathered Swine cysts and all the other weird shit he’s been cutting out of things for his future wunderkammer.
• Malatesta, murdermachine extraordinaire, descended into the Purple Haze fight pit to win some coin, but got matched up against some poor guy that seemed to have no idea who he was or what he was doing apart from that someone wanted to fight him, who then rolled a critical hit, launched himself up Malatesta’s body by almost tearing away his fused sentient breastplate, and headbutted him into unconsciousness.
• Constance beat the snot out of the same guy, but then got thoroughly kicked by a huge girl called Clara Bilimoria, the Nest of Desire.
• Alistair’s goons met Muffin McTavish out the front and told her she’d have to pay double for the drugs after all.
• Muffin put on her threatening face and said something along the lines of “Your balls are going to end up in my mouth. Because I’m going to punch you so hard in the dick that your balls are going to travel up through your body and fly out of your mouth and into my mouth.” Their reaction roll said they were kind of in to that though so Muffin started to hitch up her beautiful skirt and invited them to take a closer look then throat-punched them both.
• Muffin went to Alistair’s house and knocked on the door while Tipanius and Thoth-Mora ran around the shitty back alley to try to break in.
• Alistair acted like his goons were supposed to deliver the drugs and was very upset at Muffin’s inconvenience when she told him she hadn’t seen them, and offered her a drink.
• Muffin asked if there was anything to blow and Alistair blushed and undid his pants, then Muffin punched him so hard in the dick that one of his testicles exploded and while he was writhing on the floor in agony she started screaming at him about her drugs and money and I think threatened him with “Your dick is going to be in my mouth!”
• Meanwhile out in the alley they can’t pick the lock because neither of them are Specialists and they keep failing to roll a 1, so Thoth-Mora uses Passwall to open a huge hole in the wall and most of Alistair’s kitchen. They find Muffin writhing on the ground because some guy in a dark cloak came out of the other room and slapped her in the face with some kind of horrible mound-fleshed hand which caused a puff of something terribly narcotic to burst out of it.
• Tipanius pulled the rug out from under his feet then he and Thoth-Mora started beating him brutally around the head with chairs until he threw back his hood to reveal his hideously deformed face and spewed a cloud of gas at them. Tipanius made his save and dove out of the way but Thoth-Mora took it full in the face and got really, really high.
• The drug fiend grabbed Thoth-Mora and held him below his face, mouth open, and demanded to know who Tipanius was and what he wanted.
• Tipanius decided to ask his gods to constrict this guy instead, but they told him that he’d have to do a snake dance ritual for it to happen.
• So Tipanius started dancing and the drug fiend started regurgitating some kind of fluid straight down Thoth-Mora’s doped-out throat, to which Roy replied “I dance even harder” and the next Round an invisible snake constricted around the drug fiend’s throat and then his guts exploded so that all his weird coloured misshapen organs spilled out but I forget how but I remember that they were like every psychedelic album cover ever distilled down and turned into organs.
• Gretchen turned up because they weren’t at the Purple Haze and she was worried, didn’t object when Tipanius force-fed Alistair some of his drug fiend drug dealer’s organs so that he’d be brain dead and couldn’t tell anyone what they’d done, and helped him take Muffin and Thoth-Mora to Dr. Shub M.D.
• Muffin just needed some water and a lie down, but Dr. Shub told Tipanius that he’d never seen anything like the bag of organs he was carrying around or what had happened to Thoth-Mora, but that was pretty sure they should prepare for some pretty serious changes in the future.
• Emma leaned over to Sophie and whispered, “Does that mean I’m going to turn into one of those drug things?”, Sophie whispered back “I think so, yeah”, and Emma straightened back into her seat and softly said, “Fuck yeah.”
• They all went back to sleep in their room above the Purple Haze, with Thoth-Mora tied to the bed and Felix being spooned by Constance who softly whispered “the wizard.. the wizard..” all night until Felix woke up to the sound of someone twisting the doorknob.
• Felix softly whispered, “Constance, the wizard is in danger”, so she jumped out of bed screaming “THE WIZAAAAARD” and ran at the opening door and dragged in the first thing she got her hands on, while Muffin threatened from her bed, “I’M GOING TO TAKE ALL THE COCKS!”
• Soon enough they were holding a lit torch over the crumpled bodies of Alistair’s goons and the Purple Haze barman was apologising profusely for the lax security and offering to dispose of the bodies, but they decided a better idea was to throw them into Felix’s barrow, put a sheet over them, wheel them across town, Charisma and bribe the hell out of the stablehand and his friends, chop up the bodies, and feed them to their giant boars. So that’s what they did.
• The next day Muffin McTavish and Felix went to see an amazing seamstress for some more fashion, and they all ransacked the hell out of Alistair’s house while he was still writhing on the floor.

 

The party now consists of:

 

An autistic Fighter wearing symbiotic black armour decorated with porcine teats and insects and little worshipping figures and all kinds of weird stuff, carrying around a gold-and-pearl-hilted zweihander that he inadvertently murdered an old man for.

 

A Specialist collecting as much weird stuff as he can so he can start the world’s greatest wunderkammer, who will soon have the world’s most amazingly deadly prosthetic leg.

 

A swamp-born moonshiner who brutally killed most of his relatives due to a spider cult infestation who is starting a new life as a fabulous cross-dresser named Muffin McTavish.

 

A wizard who had half of his arm bitten off, then had his remaining good limbs torn off and digested by thin air the first time he tried to cast a spell, who is now going to be carried around like a wizard backpack by an intense swordsgirl who thinks he is just the most amazing thing ever.

 

A snake worshipper who decided that when he reaches level 2 he should go see some weird sect to perform a ritual that involves his face being eaten off, and results in him being given some kind of amazing goat snake helmet thing.

 

Another wizard who is learning a spell from his dead twin sister’s skull, who is soon going to turn into some kind of perpetually drug-producing mutant.

 

 

 

I love this game.

Greatest city of the new and ancient land, the overhanging levels of jettied houses stacked atop each other shadow the sprawling streets, solid stone architecture unknown to any of the old countries nestles behind shouting waremongers in the morning mist, birds sing from a neighbouring rooftop and something scuttles from under your bed. It’s another beautiful day in Cörpathium, watch your step.

 

When entering a new borough roll below.

 

3d6	Boroughs of Cörpathium
14-18	Well, You Don't See That Every Day..
4-13	Another Day In Paradise
3	End Times Cometh

 

	Another Day In Paradise
1d20
1	A young woman bumps into a random PC as they push through a crowd, she blushes and apologises and continues on her way. Further on into the neighbourhood the PC will find an old man hawking something that looks very much like something important to them, something they no longer seem to be carrying. There are already several interested buyers standing by his stall.
2	A shrieking man falls to his knees in the street, clawing at his skin. 1. He is the son of a Corvuscult family, prone to fits of madness. Discretion would be appreciated. 2. A wasp has crawled under his skin to lay her eggs. 3. He's just a plain old loon. 4. He is a Haruspex, suffering a vision of locust plague, harbinger to the coming of the Locust Queen.
3	A young woman is bitten by a dog.
4	A Speaker of the Godless announces a curfew in light of unnatural maulings in the neighbourhood the past few nights.
5	A couple of inherited wealth dandies sitting at a coffee house laugh at a random PC's attire.
6	A vendor of fig pies scrambles to collect the contents of his upturned cart before the crowd consumes it all.
7	A rat the size of a terrier emerges from a nearby sewer and slumps back on its hind legs in front of a random PC, scratching its bloated stomach. Roll Loyalty. It won't be pretty if you roll low.
8	A young girl hawks her services as an assistant in dangerous and foolhardy ventures. She can't be more than 14, she's an exceptionally skilled thief, and she can fit into places your fat old arse never could.
9	A street urchin attempts to snatch a coin purse or other item from a random PC.
10	A woman with old letters sewn into the folds of her dress glides through the street. Her sunken eyes are the colour of despair and she fawns over every man she meets like a whore, murmuring and cooing through full red lips.
11	A bucket of innards and vomit is dumped on the PCs from an overhead window, it is unclear if it was accidental.
12	A gaunt man with stretched hanging skin stands on an iron stool preaching to 2d10 onlookers about the evils of the Corpulent One.
13	A Mother of Silence strides through the street, her footfall would crash in your ears if her presence hadn't stolen every sound within 30'. [Mothers of Silence will be another post]
14	A spruiker in a jaunty hat proclaiming himself to be the originator of Cuckold's Courage sells bottles from a cart on the street corner. The bottles are full of: 1. Urine. 2. Fermented onions and cat faeces. 3. Putrefied fishguts. 4. Curdled milk and rubbing alcohol. 5. River water and silt. 6. Crushed lice and dust. "Just add water!"
15	An elderly woman drops the fruit she was carrying and four young men in ostentatious clothing start dancing a jig, stomping it into the road.
16	When they return home a random PC will find something important missing and a yellow feather on their bed. Hagatha Gloom of the Golden Harpies has taken a liking to them.
17	A burly drunk emerges from a brewhouse and shoves his way through the PCs.
18	A woman in obvious Toad-Dropping withdrawal pushes her way past the PCs and into a nearby alley.
19	A man wearing a large stitched leather top hat and a coat embroidered with images of vicious rodents hawks bottles of Verminbane. Caged rats are piled behind him for demonstration and several greased tame rats climb over his shoulders and crawl about his feet, leashed to his belt by string.
20	Seventh Goat mercenaries jostle the PC with the highest Strength as they pass. If offence is taken they invite you to settle the matter in the Viper's Nest fight den tonight, they've been in need of an opponent anyway.

 

Read the rest…

Following on from the last post, here’s some actual Mystics.

 

Devotee of the Corpulent One

 

They Worship What Now?

More a projection of collective behaviour and desire than a real deity, the Corpulent One manifests as an enormous bloated humanoid being that sprouts arms and various other body parts almost at random from its pustulent body.

Devotees worship him in excess of all things, food, liquor, narcotics, lust.

 

Facts and Foibles

• Devotees do not have a measure of Faith, but must be in a constant state of intoxication or excess to perform rituals. While in this state they are at -2 for all physical rolls, and unless you’re terrible at life should be role-played like the messy hedonists they are.
• Devotees often make use of glass cups to help maintain a constant state of inebriation. A liquid narcotic is poured into the cup and heated, which the Devotee then suctions to their back for absorption through the skin. This or something like it is what passes for a Holy Symbol among Devotees.
• If they are sober but wish to cast a ritual the Devotee must make a Test of Faith roll, or may gain d4 temporary Faith points by performing an act of excess like necking a full bottle of moonshine or devouring an entire roasted boar leg.
• On a 20 on Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me the Devotee loses their mind and transforms into a manifestation of the Corpulent One with a healthy appetite. HD equal to the Devotee’s level, 1 +1 per HD attacks with multiple arms and mouths, 20% chance per round of vomiting in a 10′ spray, save vs. Poison or trip balls. Everyone is on the menu.

Rituals

Delirium Tremens

Mystic Level 1

Duration: Instantaneous

Casting Time: 1 round

Range: Touch

 

The Devotee drains themselves of all intoxicants and narcotic effects, becoming utterly sober, and transfers it to a single target.

The target must save vs. Poison with a penalty equal to caster level or shiver and shake and sweat and retch and shit themselves to death under the full weight of a Devotee’s worship of excess.

If they save they’ll still be cripplingly intoxicated for the next 3d8 hours.

 

 

Endless Feast

Mystic Level 1 (replaces Turn Undead)

Duration: It ain’t over ’til it’s over.

Casting Time: 2 rounds

Range: 60′

 

A feast forms out of the surrounding area; trees bend and break themselves into a table, fully-laden platters form from dust and refuse and vapour swirls out of the air and settles as wine into goblets.

1d6 + caster level beings within view who aren’t Devotees of the Corpulent One must save vs. Magic at -2 or begin to partake in the feast. Other Mystics can save as normal and people of the Devotee’s choosing can save at +2. Creatures who are above human-like desires are unaffected.

While the feast continues anyone that comes within 10′ must save to avoid joining. Anyone trying to drag someone away from the feast will find that they’re grafted to the seat.

A further save can be made every day to try to leave the feast, but the amount of food and wine consumed each day decreases Constitution, Dexterity, and Strength by 1 (if they don’t have ability scores, just figure out which one of those things they’d have the most of and set an appropriate number). Once any score reaches zero the Corpulent One manifests at the table and consumes them, laughing hysterically and gulping from a great goblet of wine.

Seeing this causes anyone still partaking in the feast to save at a further -1 from then on.

Casting Endless Feast immediately sobers the Devotee.

 

 

 

	Malpractice
1d20
1	The flesh within the wound begins to consume itself, releasing an intense smell of rot amidst a cacophony of sucking noises and causing damage equal to the healing ritual used.
2	The wound is healed but for the next d6 hours the target is on a rollercoaster of uppers and downers, every time they try to do anything more difficult than walking there is a 50% chance of a new narcotic effect kicking in, preventing them from completing the action.
3	Boils and blisters that smell like a hangover bubble up around the wound, the target is at -2 to physical rolls for the next d4 days. These hp cannot be healed until the blisters are gone.
4	The wound heals, but little foetus arms grow out of it overnight.
5	Fat begins to flow out of the wound like a split liposuction bag, strange rodents appear out of nowhere to drink the fat until it dries up in d8 turns. These hp cannot be healed until it dries up.
6	The wound is healed but short tendrils of flesh grow from the area. Unless they are smeared with something they can consume at least once a day they will digest the flesh around them and plant the seeds for more tendrils.
7	The wound smells irresistible and the Devotee takes a d2 bite out of it.
8	The wound is healed but the target now suffers a loss of self control, needing to save vs. Poison to resist any intoxicants in their vicinity.
9	Pound of Flesh. The Devotee tears a chunk of flesh from their own body and grafts it into the target, healing the wound but taking equal damage.
10	The wound is healed but does not completely close, luminescent blue mushrooms with shimmering green gills grow from the wound, they are highly hallucinogenic when consumed but deal 1hp of damage with a 10% chance of addiction/growing from the eater's own body. They fruit once a week and turn to black sludge after 2 days.
11	No hp are restored, pink blisters swell around the Devotee's throat and burst, sending them on an acid trip for the next d6 turns.
12	The wound is healed, but the target's body swells and bloats, reducing Dexterity by 2 until they lose the weight.
13	No hp are restored, and the intoxicating smell seeping from the wound requires everyone, including the target, to save vs. Poison to stop themselves tearing at the target's flesh for consumption.
14	Chittering teeth emerge amidst the torn flesh and snap shut into a grotesque mouth where the wound used to be. The target must feed it every day or lose 1hp as the flesh around it decays.
15	No hp are restored and the target's blood flows out of their wounds, eventually turning into a clear alcohol before it stops draining out. The target is somehow able to live, but their Intelligence is reduced by 2, the Devotee would like very much to drink from them, and their blood is now flammable.
16	No hp are restored, effect as Delirium Tremens but with a bonus instead of penalty equal to caster level.
17	No hp are restored, thick round bulbs of flesh sprout all over the Devotee and burst in a yellow cloud like sporing mushrooms. Everyone within 30' must save vs. Poison or collapse in a comatose drug nightmare for the next d6 turns. The Devotee is not allowed a save.
18	The wound is healed but the area around it soon begins to turn green, weeping foul-smelling fluids and becoming almost gelatinous. The target must save vs. Poison every day to prevent the condition progressing and taking over more of their body, taking a penalty to physical rolls for every stage it advances. To completely recover, the target must make 3 saves in a row, if they fail a save it regresses to its initial condition, and if they fail 3 times in a row their body collapses in a seething pile of bubbling green filth. Any healing from a Devotee of the Corpulent One during this time will actually progress the condition.
19	No hp are restored, the Devotee's belly splits open and spills their intestines onto the floor, causing damage equal to the healing ritual used. If they survive, their innards grow back and they regain the hp lost.
20	The wound is healed, but the next time they sleep the target must save vs. Poison or erupt in a manifestation of the Corpulent One, tearing and digesting their own flesh until there is nothing left but a pungent stain. The rest of the party will definitely hear this.

 

Read the rest…