Background: Kinidymos

Kinidymos, Hunter of the Undivided 


When the inner becomes outer, and the upper becomes lower, when the male and female form the single-backed child who's eyes are replete with eyes and who's image is in place of an image, then you will enter the kingdom. These sidereal psychopomps will lead all matter to the monad and terminal oneness, it is the duty of the kinidymos to ensure this never happens.


Possessions
Dyadic compass
Disunional sword
One weapon of Choice
Lead manacles


Skills 
3 Disunial Sword Fighting
2 Weapon Skill of choice
2 Sneak
2 Second Sight
1 Swim OR Climb OR Disguise
1 Tracking






Item: Dyadic Compass
To the uninitiated this is just a broken compass in a small box, but to the kinidymos and those familiar with their ways it is a precision tool. Test your Second Sight while focusing on the needle to have it direct you towards a point of magical conflux within 6 miles. If multiple points exist it will point the the strongest, which will usually be the kinidymos' quarry.


Item: Disunional Sword *#
The sinister and iconic tool of the hunters of the holy hermaphrodites, made of the basest metal to ensure their separation and descent. The lead blade is as long as a typical longsword's, but its girth and long handle make it look stubby. On a Fumble the weapon is bent out of shape and counts as a mace until repaired. 

  1. 2
  2. 4
  3. 4
  4. 6
  5. 8
  6. 18
  7. 24






Background: Proxy Child

Proxy Child

One day you woke up in the arms of a giant, singed and lolling in its arms. You thought of how nice it would be to stretch your legs, and it put you down. You had trouble walking and felt that maybe this was a hasty decision, it put you on its shoulders. And so on and so on until this point in this place. You are still learning and still making mistakes, but your companion is always there for you, to pick you up again.

Possessions

  • A compression suit



  • A pouch containing interesting things you’ve found since you woke up, most notably a:


(d6)

  1. stuffed animal, though it’s unclear what that animal is
  2. rubber ball that unerringly returns to the hand that throws it
  3. collection of small bones strung together to make a functional puppet. The strings are long enough to stretch to the floor from the shoulders of your Proxy
  4. small furry mammal which refuses to do as you say no matter how hard you think
  5. rusty pistolet with no energy, useful for pretending to shoot the wild animals your Proxy often defends you against
  6. crown you made from a bit of the scrap you woke up surrounded by. It has markings on it that you can’t read.


  • A 7ft tall companion who is moved by your will alone:

Ceramic Proxy
Surgical white (or vividly coloured) plates form the skin of this bipedal behemoth, sliding over each other with the gentle sound of bare feet on sand. Someone made it with an eye to detail, every inch of it is an aesthetic treat. Always has 3 armour

Or an

Organic Proxy
To a casual observer it could be mistaken for a particularly large person, with a barrel chest, cabled arms and a square head. But once they spot those dull eyes it’s clear this is just a puppet. They are capable of speech, though only at your command.

Or a

Mechanical Proxy
An unsubtle conglomeration of articulated metal, its every movement grinds and twangs. This is a functional machine, made without the arrogance of a hominid form. It might be stooped and chicken-like, or a great wheel of arms and legs. Its form is up to you. Always counts as being armed with a weapon of your choice and has 3 skill in its use.



Skills

Proxy
5 Strength
2 Climb
2 Run
2 Heal
2 Swim

Child
2 Second Sight
1 Spell - Random (Table 5)
1 Spell - Random (Table 5)

Special
The Child starts with 2 Skill and 8 Stamina and counts as an oversized item for inventory purposes when carried (they are rather small and feeble). The Proxy is rolled as you would a normal character. They both share a common Luck pool.
The Child may use their own Advanced Skills for any action the Proxy takes, including magic in which case they may also use its Stamina to cast it.
The Proxy ceases to function if it loses all Stamina, is out of sight of the child for more than an hour, or is encased in lead or silver.
The Proxy heals naturally like any other character, regardless of its construction. It can also be Healed (or repaired).
If the Child dies the Proxy ceases to function. If the proxy dies the child is very sad and lonely.



I'm working on Troika! the only way I can. Come watch if you want 


Fever-flipping-Swamp


The air is moist. The moisture mixes with your sweat — the heat is relentless. The drone of insects gives you headaches, and the fever from the infected wounds has left you delirious. Your raft is damaged, and there are spirits in the trees.


You’ve only been here for three days.


Fever Swamp is a hex-crawl sandbox adventure compatible with Lamentations of the Flame Princess and most other Dungeons & Dragons clones.


Fever Swamp was written by Young Master +Luke Gearing , previously famed for his contributions to the world's favourite outsider role-playing 'zine, The Undercroft, and illustrated by +Andrew Walter, who surreptitiously inserted sigil magic into his work on our previous publication, Crypts of Indormancy, to uncertain ends.

On top of this, +Christian Kessler  and +Jarrett Crader have done an outrageously good job on the layout. The PDF is a thing of functional beauty.


Hard copies+PDF direct from us (PDF now, order shipped when the books arrive)

Just the PDF, from RPGNow

Some thoughts on god

Everything is metaphors, everything is reflected from above downwards. By observing the dramas that unfold between the dragonflys and the bees one can ascertain the movements of the stars.

"Hell" is anything sufficiently removed from the acquaintance of god that it looks like a degenerate satire.

Hell is therefore relative according to your position.

"Heaven" as a definitive end point is nothing like what anyone expects. Multiple heavens therefore exist and represent idealised versions of the sphere from which it is viewed. There may be clouds and naked babies, or it might just be less awful.

Definitive, terminal heaven is inconceivable oneness. Impractical though factual.

When planning a campaign be a seer. From tea leaves you see the future: broaden that. Take the interplay of simple things and apply it to larger scales higher up the ladder. The Demon Sea is the Mariana Trench with bigger fish and plans.

Everything is true, even when you're making it up. If you can't fit everything together now that just means hyper-god works in mysterious ways.

Hyper-god does not work. Hyper-god is not the totality of existence. The spheres are a series of reflections of hyper-god of increasing obscurity. He does not move the spheres, the spheres move in response to him.

Spherical reflections are distorting.

Visiting an aeon

Reflections are different but not independent.

Every campaign as a 70s sci-fi novel. The world is a wall; the world is a tree; owls can't die and are sent here to observe us by some unknown party; golden barges are like boats; they're just spaceships; they're, like, a state of mind man; everyone except the players sees an idealised world while the players see filth and muck (who's right?).

Every campaign as a mystery. Have a complicated network of logic between strange people and things and then introduce the players without any context. They have to learn.

Every campaign as a farce of manners. Social traps: does the snake-crab-thing want us to drink the tea or make the tea? Choose wrong and it might snip off your head a lay eggs in your belly. Do it right and it might let you ride on its shell to the nearest barge repairman.



Campaign ship

A basic campaign structure for Troika! is to give the party a golden barge, or horizon fort, or some other convenient mode of cosmic travel. At the beginning of the campaign they might be aware of a handful of spheres, or parts of spheres, or at least discrete locations. Provide some information about what can be found in these places.

Information handed out like this should be in the same way you'd expect a 10th century sailor would have it. Spices comes from that way sorta and there are dragons there and a fountain that grants eternal life and the emperor owns a tea set that summons swans when served from. There should be desirous things that players may want.

The spiders of the spider bank have found a way to weave more robust golden sails. They refuse to sell it, ensuring their treasure ships are the fastest vessels in the spheres. Getting your hands on it would ensure faster and safer journeys.

While travelling between spheres the players must expend huge resources to fuel the ships. Most of them run on gold, but more elaborate ones might have plasmic engines.

The ship will encounter troubles between places. Go watch the ship episodes of Cowboy Beebop. Turn the ship in to a little dungeon and play the Alien film.

Bad cosmic weather, or too many beasts have attached themselves to the sails and weighed it down. The further you go without stopping to scrape of these horrifying barnacles the more dangerous the trip will be, eventually scraping your metaphysical hull against the tip of a sphere, causing reality to crash right in to you.

Keeping the ship running becomes a driving factor. Making the ship nicer, or getting a better ship, or hijacking and staffing a horizon fort: also fun. Eventually the hold will be full of arcane treasures.

Golden Barge
Horizon Fort



Fever Swamp


Why look at that cover. My, what a handsome cover! Don't take my word for it, look at it again. Now imagine the kind of words such a cover must contain. Yes! That good.

I'll spare you the endless marketing jabber and just say this: THIS IS THE NEXT BOOK FROM THE MELSONIAN ARTS COUNCIL, BOUND BY WRITING ALL-STAR LUKE GEARING'S WORDS.

Fever Swamp is:

  • An adventure
  • A hex crawl
  • A sandbox
  • In a swamp
  • Very pretty
  • Compatible with Lamentations of the Flame Princess

Fever Swamp is not:
  • Appropriate
  • Half bad


Give us all your money so that we can continue making these nice things.


Please.

My Very Own GenCon Stall




It's GenCon and I'm too poor and hate-filled to run a stall there, so instead I'm going to project my malignant presence via the magic of contrived sale events.

Spend £10 or more and you won't pay postage, even if you're Johnny Foreigner. Buy some books, or pictures, or paper miniatures, or tell someone else to do it for you, or something, or other, and so on and so on.

Where: www.melsonia.com


Coupon Code: DONTTOUCHME



Starts now, ends on the 21st.

Peculiarities take one, part 1 of 6

When making a new character, roll up to three times on this table to become more planetouched (spheretouched? eh).



1 - By the Great Black Anti-Suns


11 Eyes


  1. Your eyes are dark and shimmer like the bottom of a starlit well. You don’t need external light to see by.
  2. Eyestalks. Your eyes extend from your sockets on stalks. Besides being a bit gross it isn’t hugely useful. -1 in grapple test ‘cos people quickly learn to grab you by the eyeballs.
  3. Wizard Eyes- You were born with wizard sight. Whether it’s a boon or a curse is rather subjective, but you have it. +6 Second Sight. However, it is better than the usual wizarding stare, seeing not only the magic in this world, but beyond it into other realities and dimensions. It is incredibly confusing. The GM should feel free to make up a peculiar encounter for you to represent these visions, keeping you from being sure what is real or not.
  4. Bulging eyes- Your eyes protrude from their sockets. Neither useful nor harmful, but it is quite unsettling.
  5. A golden false eye to replace the one you lost (randomly determine which eye is missing).
  6. You are afflicted with the Red Eye Curse. While your eyes are open you constantly cast Fire Bolt as though you had 12 skill in it. It will target whatever you are looking at, and you will suffer the effects of the Oops! Table as normal. You can still see while your eyes are closed, from a side effect of the curse. It’s very hard to sleep.

12 Horns

  1. Ram horns - Fashionably demonic. Head-butt people for damage as mace
  2. Orix horns - Two long, spiraling horns extend from your head. While more sinister and impressive than goat horns, they are not very useful.
  3. Rhino horn – A single horn rising from your forehead allows you to charge people and cause damage as knife
  4. Antlers – Glorious many pointed antlers, fury in the winter, bloody in the spring. They serve no practical purpose since you lack the physiology to use them as a weapon, but they look marvellous.
  5. Tusks – Jutting from your jaw are two great big ivory tusks. They serve no real function.
  6. Frills – Instead of the usual pillars, your horns are plates and frills like those of a dinosaur. You always count as having at least 1 armour.

13 Unusual legs

  1. Crow feet - Your legs pinch off below the knee into huge crow feet. Clawed (as knife) and spindly.
  2. Goat legs - A goat's hind legs replace your own. +2 Run
  3. Long legs - Your legs are twice as long as they should be. You can step over obstacles easier than others, but your height is often a problem.
  4. Short legs - Half the length of normal legs. Half movement.
  5. Hover chair – Fabricated by yourself, stolen from the foyer of a god or built by a dwarf and paid for in gold.
  6. Metal leg – A single leg has been replaced by a beautiful prosthetic. Functions as good as new, worth d66x1000 silver.

14 Hands

  1. Crab hand. One (or both) of your hands is a chitinous claw. -1(-2) to all manual dexterity rolls. However they’re meaty and strong, +1(+2) strength, and count as knives if used to attack someone.
  2. Claws. Strong claws grow from your fingers and toes. Shoes may prove a problem. 1 in 6 chance they’re retractable. Damage as knife, +1 Climb
  3. Foetid touch. Your hands are slick and sweaty with disease. If anything you touch comes into contact with an open wound or someone’s mouth they must test their luck or contract dysentery.

15 Demonic muscles

Muscles on muscles. 8-pack, square head, so on. Even though you are large you are yet stronger than would seem appropriate. +3 Strength

16  A tail

  1. Pig tail - Not prehensile, not very useful. Painful to tuck it in, best to let it hang.
  2. Prehensile tail - Whatever form it takes, you can use it like a weak third hand. Using it to attack or other such thing is at -4.
  3. Scorpion tail - A huge chitinous tail erupts from the base of your spine, easily 4 metres long. It can lash out for damage as spear, causing a luck test in those taking damage. They must test every turn until they succeed, or take a further d3 damage each turn.
  4. Peacock tail – Not literally a peacock tail, maybe, but an impressive and beautiful tail arrangement is yours.
  5. Dog-like tail – A medium length, furry tail that wags of its own accord.
  6. Horses tail – A short nub of flesh with long flowing hair

21 Tongues

  1. Forked tongue. You were born to weave falsehoods. +1 to any rolls related to lying, disguise or other such things. The GM should give you some slack in non-rolling situations. Your tongue is also literally forked
  2. Sharp tongue. Pokey, damage as knife.
  3. Long Tongue. Your tongue is like that of a chameleon. You can extend it to 3 metres and use it to grab things.
  4. Biting Tongue

22 Wings

  1. Leathery bat wings
  2. Oily vulture wings, tacky to the touch, sometimes stick together and cause you to crash. Must test Fly every 10 minutes or fall.
  3. Swan wings
  4. Vestigial wings on your back. Their look is up to you, but all they do is flap excitedly.
  5. Mechanical contrivance, very loud and quite heavy. Takes up three inventory slots
  6. Raw and bloodied bone, non-functional as wings but can be used to whack people or hang ornaments off of. Damage as club.

If you can, you fly at your normal movement speed and gain +1 Fly. They cannot be hidden.

23 Teeth

  1. Fangs. Impressive overbite, very obvious. Bite people for damage as knife. Every time you win a grapple get a free bite if you like.

24 Gills

Breathe underwater without trouble. They flap while you talk.

25 Nose

  1. Beak. You talk like the bird from The Neverending Story 2. Also feel free to peck people’s eyes out with your enormous beak (damage as sword)
  2. Trunk. Instead of a nose, a glorious trunk. Not quite elephant length, rather 6d6 inches long. It can hold things and otherwise twitch about. If it’s at least 12 inches long you can hold a knife with it (-2 to all rolls using the trunk).
  3. Pig snout. Oink. Excellent at finding truffles or other stinky ground food. +2 awareness.
  4. Long nose. Long and saggy. -1 in grapples ‘cos people tend to grab it.

26 Arms

  1. Extra arm
  2. Tentacle arms. You arms are somewhat octopoidal. Very useful for grappling (+4) and fitting into tight spaces.

31 Unusual Skin

  1. Inside out - OH DEAR GOD LET IT DIE. Functionally uninteresting, but your skin is inside out. You leave sticky patches when you sit down and can fake death really well. Maybe be able to hide things in your internal cavity.
  2. Your skin is covered in fine, small thorns that break off when brushed against like a cactus or rose. d2 automatic damage to anyone you touch or grapple. The life of a thorny fellow is a lonely one.
  3. Black. It’s hard to distinguish the contours of your body unless you wear clothes. +2 to Sneaking.
  4. Radient. Your skin glows faintly. It is alluring. +3 reaction/intimidation rolls. Also casts a dull light, like a candle.
  5. You hair and skin is white, your eyes bright pink, your body weak. -4 Stamina, -1 Skill. You are however naturally gifted in magic, and may choose three spells to start the game with 4 ranks in. All magical training takes half the time and cost.
  6. Skin like deep summer forests, hair like brambles. +2 to stealth while in a forest setting. You never starve as long as you have at least 6 hours of direct sunlight per day. It does not heal you though.

32 Unusual Vital Fluids

  1. Metal - Liquid metal! Silver veins. People wounding (5+) you need to test their luck or take 2d6 damage from molten hot metal
  2. Mucous - Thick green-yellow filth. When testing your luck to not die from your wounds, get a free re-roll. Your blood is slow and sticky, very hard to lose.
  3. Poisonous - People getting any in their mouth must test their luck or die.
  4. Tar - Thick and black. Anyone causing you 5+ damage must test their Strength or their weapon gets stuck in you.
  5. Plant - White/green sap blood. You are always fragrant.
  6. Wind - A yawning portal to Pandemonium lays at your heart. When wounded (5+) the yowling madness escapes. Everyone except the bleeder must test their luck or be stunned for a turn.

33 Mystical Parasite

You have contracted an other worldly parasite, wrapped around your ego and feeding on your dreams. If you ever fail to raise a skill at the end of an adventure it will devour d6 stamina before the next. However, if you ever die there is a 1 in 6 chance it will drag your spirit part way with it when it returns to the astral plane, causing you to become a ghost. You may continue playing as a ghost.

34 Crown of flesh

You have a series of protruding growths on your head that look distinctly crown-like. Replace the 6th Mien of all demons with “worshipful”.

35 Spines

A crest of spines runs from your forehead, down your back and to the base of your spine. You need to get creative with clothing. -1 to people grappling you, those things hurt.

36 Withered

  1. One or both arms are skin and bone, like a salted mummy, and grossly disproportionate to your body. -1 to Strength
  2. One or both legs are shrunken and brittle. -1 to Running
  3. Your head is shrunken, as though a headhunter’s trophy sat on your shoulders. Your mouth is stuck in a sinister, moronic grin.
  4. Your whole body appears as though you were long dead and dry. Oddly no physical effect, but people may mistake you for being an unliving monser.
  5. One or both hands are twisted, claw-like, and frail. You suffer no physical effect, but must hold things oddly.
  6. You are well past your prime, old verging on frail. You lose 4 Staminal but gain 2 Luck.

41 Corrosive vomit

You may squirt out your guts at will. Ranged attack, deals damage as follows, and half as much to yourself.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7+
2
2
2
4
4
6
8

42 Detachable limbs

If a limb is severed it still functions normally. However they don’t reattach themselves. Instead you’d need to brace them to yourself somehow. This applies to everything, even your head. Dismemberment still hurts and can kill you, but only through damage, not automatically.

43 Fur

It can be patchy or luxurious, your choice. Resistance to mundane cold, as though wearing appropriate gear at all times.

44 Ears

  1. Large ears. Large and saggy like an elephant. Keeps you cool in the summer. +1 Awareness

45 Curious Legs

  1. Frog legs. You have long bouncy frog legs. You appear smaller because of how you stand (like a frog) but you’re normal height. You can jump 15 feet straight upwards.

46 Long neck

Long snakelike neck. You can twist it 180 degrees! +1 while grappling.

51 Faces

  1. Fish Face. Your face makes you look like your head is stuck in the rear end of a trout. You talk with a strange accent and can breathe under water.
  2. Rearranged face. Your mouth might be in your forehead, your eyes up your nostrils, and so on.

52 Bewildering Skin

  1. Bark Skin. Your skin is rough and mossy, pleasant smelling. Your skin protects your as chain armour, but does not heal quickly. Resting only restores 1 Stamina, and then only in sunlight.
  2. Thick skin. Your basic armour is as leather, due to your thick skin. Does nothing while wearing proper armour.
  3. Scales. 50/50 partial/full cover. Either way, gives you added protection (always count as wearing leather) and looks cool.
  4. Feathers. Partial or full coverage. Pick a colour for them.
  5. Snail Skin. Your skin is covered with the thin delicate shell of a snail. It cracks and oozes easily, offering no protection. All it does is give you the appearance of sappy bark.
  6. Chameleonic. Your skin can change colour at will. You don’t have enough control to make complex patterns, but you can imitate most hues. +1 Stealth +1 Disguise

53 Fingers

  1. Webbed Fingers. Maybe a discrete extension, or maybe you have big fat frog hands, either way have +3 Swimming.
  2. Many jointed fingers. Long and spidery.
  3. Three thick fingers on each hand.
  4. Asymmetrical clawed hand. Either your left or your right hand is replaced with a claw of some sort. Possibly a bird talon, crab claw, somthing like that. Deals damage as knife.
  5. Tentacle fingers. Like the arms only less useful and more disgusting. +1 grapple.

54 Bestial Head

  1. Pig
  2. Dog
  3. Rabbit. Can see the future
  4. Lion
  5. Pelican
  6. Goat

55 Excellent Muscle control

You can exert conscious control over your muscles. You can hold your breath to the point of death, you can stop your own heart, vomit at will, hold onto a ledge until your fingers fall off, and so on. This does not counter magical control. +2 Climb +1 Strength

56 Therianthropy

You can turn yourself into an animal at will and gain the following benefits for doing so. You maintain full mental capacity but drop (or burst out of) your clothes and belongings. All do damage as small monsters, except for dog and pig which are modest. If you die in your animal form you stay in your animal form.

  1. Pig. +2 awareness, may eat any vaguely edible matter as a provision. Damage as modest monster
  2. Goat. Can talk in a terrifying goat-voice.
  3. Small monkey. +6 climb.
  4. Dog. +1 awareness, +4 run. Does damage as modest monster.
  5. Cat. +4 stealth, +4 second sight.
  6. Rat. +4 climb, +2 Stealth, does 1 damage on successful attack.

61 Torso head

Your head is set between your shoulders, right in the middle of your chest. This prevents you from wearing hats and normal armour, but is otherwise quite alright.

62 Voice

Your voice...:
  1. Always echoes
  2. Lush and booming.
  3. Universally understood by everyone. This doesn’t go both ways, unfortunately.
  4. Hissy like a snake
  5. Slurping, drool covered words
  6. Jumbled chaos-speak


63 Mobile Bones

You can dislocate and manipulate your skeletal system in a disconcerting manner. You may fit through any hole bigger than your head, although anything narrower than your shoulders might take a minute or two.


64 Many-Jointed

  1. Left arm
  2. Right arm
  3. Left leg
  4. Right leg
  5. Fingers
  6. Neck

The limb in question isn’t immediately obvious as being too jointed, rather it has an uncanny mystery too it.

65 Iron Flesh

Either due to an accident or because of practical considerations, you are partially mechanical. Choose some portion of your body to be mirror finished metal rather than flesh. Gain +1 natural armour. Now roll d6: on a 1 you are actually a thinking engine which is part flesh, and not the other way around.

66 Semi Insubstantial

You flew too close to an anti-sun, or drank from the White Sea, or a wizard did it. Either way, you are somewhat insubstantial. You are always a little bit translucent, but at will (and at the cost of 1 stamina per second) you can become fulling insubstantial, able to pass through walls and ignore physical considerations.

Spheres of Existence That Definitely Exist


Palace of Tigers
Or the Palace of Palaces. Debate exists over the origin of the name. "Palace" understandably stems from the infinite expanse and multitude of palaces; you can travel for months through only richly stocked dining halls or pristine hedge mazes. Tigers could be a reference to the anointed semi-divine princes that squat in its halls like glorious warlords, battling across the solariums and through the chapels to assert their authority. Or it could be the suffusion of tigers.

Interesting fact: all tigers originate from the palace of tigers, you can tell the distance of its relation to that place by how verbal they are. The most remote examples hardly talk at all.

The Palace of Tigers is always very clean. Within hours of someone disturbing the decor it will be quietly tidied up by the discrete domestic staff that live in their own apartments across the sphere. These apartments are inaccessible because no one other than the servants can even see the entrances.

The servants themselves are very hard to notice. One could be politely standing against a wall to allow your party to pass unbothered by the burden of accidentally trampling them and you wouldn't even know. To see a servant takes a concerted effort (i.e. the player must state they want to look for servants) and a successful Second Sight or Awareness test.

SECRET: tipping a servant will cause them to die. They never refuse because they are so polite. The body will be swept away imminently.


Goblin Labyrinth
Goblins consider everything to be part of the labyrinth. Where we see a meadow they see a problem to be solved and navigated, just another part of the maze. To help future goblins avoid having trouble themselves with solving the same problem twice they will lay the foundations for a more traditional labyrinth. Goblins are often spied planting hedge rows or digging foundations and laying mortar.

Sometimes whole spheres are integrated into the labyrinth, other times it's just a dash of dungeon here and there. The construct might be very old and abandoned, occupied by ungoblin squatters. It's always a concern when entering what looks like your bog standard dungeon environment only to find out it's an entrance to the goblin labyrinth. Before you know it a week has gone by and you haven't seen the same junction twice and are walking beneath an alien sun through hedge mazes made of ivory.


The Shallow Sea
The World Sea! The Salty Shallows! An ocean which rarely goes past your knees. Natives live in elevated cities on stilts driven into the bedrock. Hazards include droughts followed by tsunamis, unexpected large waves, sink holes and rifts, sharks, poisonous coral, undines and ravenous flatfish. Best place in the cosmos to acquire black pearls, which can be used to pay for spells on a 1 pearl/1 stamina basis.


Empires of Flower & Foliage
The land of the Doles, who live in ignorance under the bountiful blossoms of their forests. The sedative effects of the forest are slow acting, but after a few days you'll be as dozy as the Doles. Luckily fruit is abundant and rain puddles linger and taste of sweetness and light. The place holds a dark secret but everyone is too blitzed to figure it out.


Primary Underworld
The most commonly encountered Underworld, being closest, geographically speaking, to the material spheres. The Underworlds are nested within (on top, beside, they're all innapropriate metaphors for something bordering on the divine) each other, with the climbing nestedness creating inhabitants of orders of magnitude more potent. To illustrate: Shazmazm, a tertiary underworld "prince" has spent recent millennia slowly transporting his essence through tiny gateways between the primary and tertiary underworlds with the intent to set himself up as a god. His mosquito demon servants have patiently drained and deposited him for all this time. In response the demons with minds to do so have been fleeing the primary in preparation for the conclusion of his metastasis and beginning of his Godzilla-esque reign of terror.

The Demon Sea
Physical adjunct to the Primary Underworld, simultaneously contained within like a lake and encircling it entirely, dependant on perspective. Whether it is a separate sphere is debatable, but it is suitably distinct.
The beaches of the demon sea are not sand, but the treasures of fallen empires and arrogant kings. Jewel's, crowns, paintings and statues as far as the eye can sea, buffeted by the waves. For each hour the party digs around the beach they may fill an inventory slot with "treasure". They may continue this as long as they like since the beaches are inexhaustible.

Make a giant list of random treasures for the party to pull out of their pockets later.




The Wall
A cliff which continues up forever. People live on huge "shelves" and clamber from one to the other on large ladders. Well maintained ladders between settlements can bring in a tidy income for the caretaker. Goats are a sign of great wealth since the only common edible wildlife are monkeys, and monkeys are all hair and gristle. Shepards are nobility and monkeymongers are dwellers of the bottom shelves, doomed to be deafened by monkeys for the rest of their days.

Religious authorities argue about the position of god and the direction one must proceed in order to approach them. Some say he is over the wall, with the wall seperating us from the afterlife. Others say his is out beyond the blue sky and built the walls to keep evil at bay. Others suspect he sits stop the wall judging us all, and some unusual sorts say he lounges at the bottom, indifferent to our suffering.

Spell: Altered Beast

Altered Beast (8)

The spell is a complex protean ritual practised by obscure and unscrupulous warrior cults. Barbaric killers gather at holy places under old trees, lead to their knees by cunning men possessing an intimate acquaintance, a personal experience, of the divine. There they wait as the priest-call goes out to the woods, from which creatures soon emerge in hunger to find large and meat-rich warriors knelt, serenely waiting.

The animals satisfy their hunger on the willing men, consuming them entirely. Once they finish with their meal the priest calls for his champions and the man-flesh asserts its dominance over the meat laden animals. Familiar faces contort those of the creatures' and they kneel once again over their own steaming corpses.



Altered beasts can transform into the animal they were eaten by (or vise versa) at the cost of 4 stamina. While in their original form they still possess some of its traits since their alien flesh cannot be as it once was.

What kind of animal did it call and what benefit does their human form gain?


  1. Bear - a huge, a hulk of a man. Your arms are like trees and you hunger like there's a hole in your belly. +4 strength and you may heal from up to 8 meals a day.
  2. Wolf - you can smell flesh-stink on the air with your sleek and angled nose. +2 tracking, +2 stealth
  3. Deer - alert but flighty, your staccato motion betrays your nature. +4 running, +2 awareness
  4. Boar - broader, hairier, angrier. +3 tracking, +2 strength, +4 stamina
  5. Tiger - wise, haute, familiar with the paths between palaces. +4 second sight, +2 strength.
  6. Badger - irascible, thick skinned, burrowing. +1 natural armour through sheer bloody mindedness, +1 sneaking.
All altered beasts can heal as though eating provisions if eating the flesh of their own kind. No limits to the number of times they can benefit from this. Every time they do this they must put an advancement tick in a new skill called "Bestiality". The skill does nothing, but once it reaches 6 the altered beast loses what sense they still had and becomes a raving beast roaming the forests.

SOME RULES FOR KILLING WITH D6S

MELEE COMBAT


  1. The attacking player rolls a number of d6 equal to their FIGHTING NUMBER, keeping the result hidden. The fighting number should be between 4 and 6 I reckon.
  2. They then declare what they rolled. THIS CAN BE A LIE. Looking for pairs, triples etc. and highest value.
  3. The defender then either ACCEPTS the decision and doesn't get to see the attacker's dice (skip to step 5), making what their opponent said true, OR CHALLENGES it.
  4. IF THEY CHALLENGE: The attacker reveals their dice. If the attacker was lying, the attacker takes one hit. If the attacker was telling the truth they get to just keep the roll and the challenger takes one hit.
  5. The defender then rolls d6 equal to their fighting number and tries to beat what their opponent rolled (quadruples beat triples beat pairs etc, high beats low.)
  6. Whoever rolled the biggest and highest set (in that order or importance) deals damage to the opponent equal to 1 plus the difference. (so two pairs vs. would see the loser taking 1 damage, single high number vs triple would see them take 3 damage)


RANGED COMBAT

  1. The DEFENDER rolls dice equal to their DODGING NUMBER (4-6)
  2. The ATTACKER rolls dice equal to their SHOOTING NUMBER (4-6 again probably)
  3. The attacker then compares their dice to the defender's looking for matched numbers. Pick one matched number, if any, and deal damage equal to the number or those numbers you have. 
SO: Bob rolls 1,1,3,5 for shooting Susan. Susan rolls 1,3,6,6. Since Bob matched the 1 and got two 1s, he deals 2 damage to Susan. He could pick the 3 and do one damage, but that's silly.