Hey, so recently I ran a couple of playtest sessions of STEAL THE EYES OF YASHOGGHUH online (it was great, highlights at the end) and to speed things up we used starting equipment packs that I’ve used a few times before.

 

While we were playing Brendan S asked if I’d published them and since he brought up how useful equipment packs are for streamlining character generation, here’s the packs I’ve been letting people choose randomly – three Sword-Whores, three Adepts/Specialists/Thieves, and three WIZARDS.

 

There are a couple of “healing potions” in there that mention making saves. If you fail you randomly mutate, or in the case of The Bottled Nectar of the House of Honey and Salt:

  • Both fail – Your body loses all integrity and slops and expands in a flowing pile of the Velvet Blessing/Saintsblood.

  • Only CON fail – The flesh of a random body part shifts and groans beneath the skin. Make another CON check each Turn – Until you succeed, make a WIS check every time you exert yourself, if you fail the body part becomes Saintsblood.

There’s also some drugs. For me drugs work like this:

Effects last until you FAIL the associated Ability check, made each Turn.

If you roll a 1 or a 20 on a check you’re addicted.

While addicted, whenever not under the influence of the drug you suffer all of its normal negative effects as well as its withdrawal effects, and all checks involving the associated Ability Score are Doomed (checks that would already be Doomed are Double Doomed).

After each full day without the drug, make the associated Ability check to recover from addiction.

Quick, easy, smooth.

Doomed means you roll twice and take the worst. Yes that’s the same as Disadvantage. No there is no replacement for Advantage.

 

ANYWAY HERE’S THE EQUIPMENT

Sword-Whore #1
Dagger broken from self-congratulatory bronze mercenary statue. Partial finger attachment remains.
d4 damage
Greasy defective matchlock pistol, paper packet of powder and loose misshapen shot balls - d4 Ammo Dice
d8 damage
Discarded meathooks tied haphazardly around the end of a straight-ish branch.
d8 damage
Small wood and hide shield, the distorted face of some furry animal stretched across it.
+2AC/DB
Layer upon layer of fishskin tied together with catgut.
Light Armour, +2AC/DB
Scale-covered gauntlets with fingers designed to look like angry fish eels.
Armoured Codpiece of Unspeakable Majesty.
Covered in acanthus designs and flowers and scrollwork and a central face with whatever expression seems most appropriate.
A rather large rat held in a lantern converted into a cage. You're getting closer to taming it, but it seems to have recently been infected by some manner of parasite, altering its behaviour strangely.
A tarnished mirror.
A tattered and much-repaired fishing net.
Three candles and a shard of flint.
Copper cooking pot.
d6 Ration Dice
d10 Red Spice
Red Spice
-Charisma-
Like cocaine and steroids had a baby that smelled like paprika.
Positive: +2 to all physical rolls.
Negative: make CHA checks twice and take the second one regardless of whether it's better or worse.

Withdrawal: -2 to everything ever.
Kludge caltrops made from broken pieces of glass and metal.
A bottle of gin.
4gp

Sword-Whore #2
Long sharp knife with a patch of pitted copper discolouring.
d4 damage
Flintlock pistol plated with filigreed copper, with a pommel shaped like a round expressionless head.
Curling goat's powder horn and a pouch of shot balls carved with little faces - d10 Ammo Dice.
d8 damage, 1in6 reload
Long-barrelled jezzail inscribed with passages and illustrations from the book of Pestilent Proverbs and three stiletto bayonets attached to its muzzle, with a sharp-pronged aiming fork, and a round-bellied retching idol that dispenses powder from its mouth and ball shots from its anus – d10 Ammo Dice
3d4 damage, 1in6 reload.
Needs to be rested on something in order to aim – use an aiming fork, lean on a friend, or spend a Round setting up on something suitable nearby, otherwise it’s -5 to-hit.
Bastard sword with a painstakingly crafted swollen cock for a hilt.
d8 damage
Slim, hunched plate, you can never stand up straight. Chain hangs lazily from beneath the breastplate and the rounded sparrow's beak close helm that comes with it.
Heavy Armour, +6AC/DB
Black iron gauntlets intricately filigreed with golden dancers that dress and undress themselves as the segments move.
A mummified hand turned nearly black, it bears carven symbols on its fingertips and wicks protrude from under its nails.
A wooden cup and three stone dice.
Half a bottle of dark, potent alcohol.
A leather bandoleer of pouches, filled with empty ceramic vials.
d10 Ration Dice
50ft black silk rope.
Hooded Lantern.
Oil flask x 3
Chalk.
Tinderbox and flint.
Bottled Nectar of the House of Honey and Salt

Instantly heal Wounds and regain 2d4hp.

Make a CON and WIS check.

Sword-Whore #3
Braided hemp sling and a pouch of lead bullets - d8 Ammo Dice.
d4 damage
Claymore with lead-plated mouse skulls suspended by string tied all about the cross-guard and pommel.
2d6 damage
Crossbow that looks like it were made of burnt, twisting branches, with a rope noose for a stirrup.
Quiver of bolts – d8 Ammo Dice.
d6 damage
Ceramic armour covered in cherubic faces and acanthus, with a wide, dew-covered bowl bevor splayed out beneath your face. Stacked platforms on the shoulders hold smouldering pillar candles oozing molten wax, the resonance of singing causes vibrations that slide blows away from the armour's surface.
Heavy Armour, +6AC/DB, +8AC/DB while singing
A wax-sealed glass pot of dark blue dye.
A leather satchel containing two charcoal pencils and a blank tattered book missing half its pages.
A tarnished brass looking-glass, creeping fungus grows beneath the lenses.
Two large half-opened purple flowers, so dark they're almost black, the bulbs still pliant and fresh.
A pouch of rune-carven finger bones.
d10 Ration Dice
Torch x 4
Tinderbox and flint.
Oil flask.
Mallet.
d8 Iron Spikes Dice

Adept #1
Dagger shaped like a long, waving tongue, the tastebuds make a convenient surface for smearing poison salve.
d4 damage
d6 Poison Dice
Bloatsyrup
Induces rapid-onset elephantiasis in the general area of exposure.
A pair of well-trained blue-faced wrens. They go for the eyes.
+2 AB, +4 DB, one hit will kill them, ignore non-burst ranged attacks that aren't a natural 20. If one dies the other won’t leave its side.
Blackwood arbalest with a pitted steel bow, heavily damascened in gold, with a push-lever reloader.
Quiver of bolts - d10 Ammo Dice.
2d4 damage, 3in6 reload
Rich yellow quilting with slashed and puffed shoulders and an inscribed copper gorget polished to a high shine, hung around with porcelain charms.
Light Armour, +2AC/DB
A small greasy specimen bottle full of some manner of venom
50ft rope
Lantern
Oil flask x 4
Thieves tools
d10 Ration Dice
A bronze comb
Tinderbox
Liquid Flesh as concocted by the Alchemist Un-Raga Praag

Instantly heal Wounds and regain d8hp.

Make a CON check.

Adept #2
This grenade that you found in this place one time.
Roll d6 when they try to use it:
1. Oops. 2d4 burst damage right in your face.
2. Fuck d6HD worth of expanding mouth-covered Trollflesh spills out as soon as you twist the pin.
3-4. Dudddd.
5-6. Hey it works! Roll to-hit for 4d4 burst damage, roll 4's again.
Polished black bog wood short bow, a quiver with a small flintlock fire basket on its side, and arrows with heads shaped from sharpened rosin - d8 Ammo Dice.
d6 damage
3in6 chance per Round to light fire basket
d4 fire damage per Round, dice size increases on maximum damage, decreases on a 1
Deep red spanking paddle with nails hammered through it.
d6 damage
A perpetually deranged cat tied to the end of a long stick.
d4 damage
Oiled black leather, eternally slippery, smells of sugar.
Light Armour, +2AC/DB
A bundle of crow feathers tied together with human hair
A wooden mallet and ten bent nails removed from a shipping crate
A wooden pipe, well-used.
A set of broken lock-picks.
Roll twice and take the worst.
d6 Ration Dice
Fatty candle x 1
Tinderbox
A well-leafed pamphlet of smutty woodblock illustrations

Adept #3
Pollaxe of foot-long removable segments interlocked together, reinforced with bronze banding, perfect for checking for traps or removing the axe top for close encounters.
d8 damage
Horseman's hammer, notches scratched into the haft.
d6 damage
Carven bronze breastplate and tassets depicting a scene of roiling seas washing away an army of riderless horses, watched over by forlorn looking girls with the lower bodies of sea beasts.
Medium Armour, +4AC/DB
Fully-enclosed bronze helmet with a slit visor and a domed top bearing a spired crown.
Bottle of wine x 3
d10 Ration Dice.
Thieves tools.
Lantern covered in five screaming faces, light spilling from their mouths.
Oil flask x 2
Tinderbox.
50ft roppe.
Vial of blood.
Grappling

Wizard #1
Censer flail; a reinforced hollow sphere covered in decorative spines, perforated to release whatever you care to burn inside it, though narcotic weeds are traditional.
d8 damage
Black half mask of horns; horns on the eyes horns on the temples horns horns horns. Lips painted lifeblood red and limbs wrapped all about with rich red velvet string, pale flesh bulging between the lines.
+2AC/DB unless they don’t care about fashion
A greying human skull. Strange patterns sprawl about its interior.
A big sack of weed
d10 Spell Components Dice
d12 Ration Dice
50ft red velvet rope
1ft-wide polished silver hand mirror
Black candle x 10.
You seem pretty okay with melting them to your body while they burn so that you don’t have to hold them.
Flint and steel
Spellbook containing:
Empatheticum
Enfold Subcutis
It's Only Flesh

Wizard #2
Ivory axe carved from leviathan bone.
d6 damage
Knobbed mace with iron mushrooms growing out from a central mass and trailing down the shaft.
d6 damage
Censer Robes of the Gastronome
The raiment of a saint of the Corpulent One, still encrusted with thick layers of his hardened regurgitation, dangling and dragging censer balls full of powdered narcotics and spices.
Light Armour, +2AC/DB
A small collection of mouse skulls
Gauntlets that look like terrible fish with protruding needle-teeth when you close your fist
d8 Spell Components Dice
d10 Ration Dice
Lantern
Oil flask x 5
Chalk
Spellbook containing:
Corpsechat
Spider Climb
It's Only Flesh

Wizard #3
Decaying knife swollen with rust, fragile but vicious.
d4 damage
A dagger with a deep fuller running down its length, once dropped by a distracted old man. At the centre of the fuller is a decorative eye which seems to blink every time you're not looking directly at it.
d4 damage
Sling fashioned from old undergarments, and a sack of dung-mud bullets – d6 Ammo Dice.
d4 damage
Double-barrelled wheellock pistol with a large black pommel covered in pearlescent studs, and a powder horn made from the spiralling shell of a predatory seaborn mollusc – d8 Ammo Dice.
d8 damage, 1in6 reload
Can be fired twice before reloading, roll reload for each barrel.
A broken-shield breastplate tied in place with scratchy rope and an intricate set of leg armour carved from dark wood, with shingled shins and sickeningly colourful fungus growing from the backs of your thighs, bobbing fruiting bodies dusting spores in your wake as you walk.
Light Armour, +2AC/DB
Bottle of gin x 2
d12 Spell Components Dice.
d6 Ration Dice.
Torch x 3
Tinderbox.
50ft scratchy rope x 2
Spellbook containing:
Polymorph
Black Colossus
Sleep

Highlights of playing STEAL THE EYES OF YASHOGGHUH have included:

  • Accidental blood-soaked threesome with a fungal corpse.
  • Murdering a lantern boy by way of misplaced/over-eager “discipline” after he survived being dropped down a well.
  • Reviving a corpse to discover the temple’s secrets but utterly failing at diplomacy while hacking away its limbs plucking out its eyes and accidentally discovering a secret passage by throwing its limbless body around in an attempt to mock/defile its religious beliefs.
  • Repeated attempts by +Mateo Diaz Torres to convince people that every situation could be solved by letting him polymorph them into a giant centipede.
  • Maggot mutation by way of being too agreeable but owning that shit despite losing a love-interest over it.
  • Ending a suspicious temporary partnership with mercenaries by throwing a knife at their leader while she crawls across a tongue bridge, rolling a nat. 20, knocking her the fuck out, and watching her and her bag holding half the treasure plummet into the deep dark cavern she was crossing.
  • +James Young‘s wizard Wonko making all the Cast the Bones rolls to absorb things into his body transmuted into fat including a 20ft frog god while trying to convince cultists he’s the new form of their god as he swells and vomits black bile.
  • +Jeremy Duncan‘s Lord Suckfist ineffectually leading an expedition, avoiding all major conflicts (apart from the murder of Lantern Boy), attempting to casually walk away with all the treasure mid-fight, getting a net thrown on him by a friendly-fire fumble, then getting critted by the first attack against him by a smiling woman named Marigold Gumph in a stitched black leather bodysuit slamming 21 damage into his 5HP frame with a spiked mace.
  • +FM Geist‘s white trash fabio fighter Mare Thrace overcoming -1 STR -2 INT and +2 WIS to murder basically everything with increasing greatness (headbutt-smashing the final swollen eye of a fly beast, leaping from Wonko’s ballooning body after applying healing salve to a wound left from prior suck-and-hot-cup liposuction attempts so he doesn’t split apart then spinning in mid-air and blowing the Spawn Priest’s head off with a jezzail), and finally convincing Harold the cultist, after building up a rapport all game, to accept Wonko as his new god moments before a chaos dog tore out his guts.

 

Also yeah hi I’m back?