Shake it off

Some days you wake up and your cup runneth not. Where before you couldn't shift your head for fear of something sharp and interesting sloshing over the side and onto your lap, now it is dipped into with a dozen tiny spoons who have to scrape against the sides.

Priests who took vows of pacifism. They are all issued apostate bodyguards to inflict and deflect harm on their behalf.

The princess in the tower was the worst monster of all and contained all life, the only way to stop her was a physical and metaphorical rape, sullying the universe forming inside her. Even the king of the dead refused to do this.

Humans from the end of time who seed the past with immense fighting machines, intended to be recovered by enclaves of their people and used to prevent the future they have. Their technology is not accurate so they form communities and pass on the locations as prophecy.

A group of nomads who run from their past. Their past chases them and all their stories are true. Towns they camp near have children stolen by changelings and trolls move in under their bridges.

Magicians travel between worlds regularly, understand actual science, every wizard tower you plunder is a monumental loss to humanity.

The undead siege an unsiegable sea wall. Months and months, bodies on bodies. Eventually they will walk over.

The Friendly Sea leads directly into the Deamon Sea, this is where all drowned sailors go, where all the treasure ships have sunk and also explains why it is so dangerous. The waters pour down a daemonic drain. The shores of the primary sub-realm are littered with these treasures.

The world is infinite, as is each sub-realm and realm above. The daemons worship us as gods but we do not understand their ways. Do we kill our gods as we worship them?

The world is shaped like a trampoline with a bowling ball in the middle. At these points the worlds touch, but they are very steep.

At any one time there are 4 or 5 things that might end the world.

Vornheim is a spaceship, buried face down in the side of a mountain.

Rats have a secret world with overlays our own. They have kings and countries and wars.

Magic-Users aren't real wizards until level 20, whereupon they retreat from the banal and petty world to pursue things we can't appreciate. Up until then they can barely claim to be apprentices or dabblers.

You get yourself pulled in so many directions, sometimes you have to shake it off.

Maces Mean Business

Maces and other percussive weapons were specialised tools of war, intended to deal with armoured threats. An un-armoured gentleman wielding a mace vs. a fellow with a sword would be in deep trouble as the swordsman steps back as you swing, deftly chopping your fingers off while blocking the blow. However, put a layer of armour on the pair of them and things swing in the other direction. Good luck slicing through my chain and gambeson you sword using nob!

Medium percussive weapons:
+1 to hit opponents with AC 16 or more. Otherwise, -1 to hit.

Certainly a mace would fuck you up. No doubt about it. But a mace can only kill you outright by hitting the head or the spine, whereas a sword can do terminal harm in all sorts of wonderful and exciting ways.









Other interesting things about maces: they have been used as a symbol of secular power around the world throughout history. Something about a bloody great club just screams I'm in charge. The particular mace pictured above is in fact so important that the House of Commons isn't considered in session unless that mace is there. It represents the royal authority and can be lost just by picking it up and moving it.

See those things police carry? Maces. For hundreds of years keepers of the peace have carried maces of some sort or another. After all, it's peace they want, not bloodshed. Pull a sword and you're saying you're ready to kill someone, pull a mace and you're saying you might kill someone or maybe just make them wish they'd been a bit less rowdy.

Maces!

You may have guessed that I have a new red pen

You'd be surprised at how many people have accused me of being disturbed after viewing my handwriting over the years. They claim it's indicative of latent psychosis, I claim it's endearingly ham fisted.

Either way, have a half baked idea I drew as a break from writing about ooglies and giant lizards.