Mounted on a Pin (Aclas Dungeon)

The central dungeon of Those Fragile Bridges, my funnel hexcrawl for Locheil's Aclas.

The Panopticon is shaped like its namesake - a 3-floor tower of 30 foot high rooms, each open to a central pillar and its arcflash-white spotlight.

There are no random encounters; the Mystic would not permit loose variables in his home. Instead, each exploration turn the spotlight clicks one segment clockwise - starting at 2/5/8, then 3/6/9, and so on.

If the spotlight sees the PCs (which is different than "passing through the room they are in" - there is a chance to hide), it flashes red. Puyinthel notices you. He reaches out with telekinetic hands to drag a PC into room 10 for interrogation. The rest take 1d8 damage per round as the light burns them away into nothing.

This spotlight is a real, physical object, and can be destroyed. If it is, Puyinthel leaves 10 to hunt the saboteurs. The spotlight does not notice those under the influence of the killing-chalice from hex C1. 

Each room connects to each other on its floor, with the exceptions of 8 and 10. The staircase between the first two floors is from 3-6, then the next from 5-8. There is an unlocked door into room 1, and a barred window into room 6.

1. Tribute Room

The only place in the Panopticon open to others - an altar for the people of the island to leave food, water, and gifts for Puyinthel.

2. Ankle Cutter

Seams run across the bottom of this room's outer wall, and a holographic two-dimensional eye floats in the center of it. If the eye sees you (it cannot be destroyed, but can be blinded with sand and so on) pass through this room, curved blades snap out from the seams, aiming for hamstrings (1d8 damage, immobilizing you on a 6+), and the eye laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs as the Gargoyle comes.

3. Gargoyle - Stairs

A statue of a bearded man dredged up from the depths, its cracks filled with gold. Its head ends above the lower jaw, a flat ruby shaped like <0> hovering where it would have been. 4 HD, 14 AC, takes only one damage from things not meant to break stones, slow, knocks you prone with a slap for +2 1d8 or stomps on the prone for +4 2d10.

The Gargoyle sees only through the ruby, which can be plucked from its head (worth 200gp - the gold in the statue is worth another 100). If Puyinthel dies, it shuts down (the intact Gargoyle, sold as an art piece, is worth 1000). 

It sits on the floor like a reprimanded child, still except for the ruby spinning like a radar dish. Next to it, stairs lead up to room 6.

4. Serpent's Egg

This room has no doors in or out, only thin plaster walls. Behind them is an empty, dusty room, with a soft golden egg laid haphazardly on the floor.

If brought to the sea serpent in hex A2, it will do anything for you in return, even if it spells its own death. If heated in a forge, it will hatch into a newborn sea serpent.

5. Lockbox - Stairs

A heavy safe with jewelry (750 gp) stolen from Puyinthel's guests or manifested from nothing. It has no key - Puyinthel locks and unlocks it with his Crown when he needs to pay his Pursuers. As such, the keyhole has been filled with lead.

6. Window

The outer wall here is barred, instead of solid. Small and agile PCs could sidle in through it. On the inside, it is covered in a sheet of paper with the barest beginnings of some convoluted design painted in ink on its bottom-left corner.

7. The Error

Kept where Puyinthel can see it. A haunting spirit, something like a tree, something like a worm, colored perfectly flat grey like a missing texture. The Mystic has stuck it to the wall with nail after nail after nail. It bleeds a sheenless black.

He made a mistake, when he was younger and more foolish. He let it in. It has a parasite-Crown drawn from Puyinthel, under the inverse focus Loneliness. This Crown overrides Puyinthel's - it is immune to all of his effects, but he is not immune to its.

Anyone touching it disappears as long as they are doing so - and cannot see anyone else as long as they are under this effect. 

The Error exists only to kill Puyinthel, but is also mindlessly, obviously hostile to all other humans. It has an effective 2 HD and 10 AC (and grinds for 1d8 damage at +2 to-hit with its radula), but as long as the Mystic lives it will return from death, crawling out of the earth miles away.

8. Collage

The inner wall of this room is covered in hanging paintings - amateurish portraits and landscapes and delirious abstracts, many half-finished. They are layered - take a canvas down and find another beneath it. Take it too and reveal another image, painted directly onto the wall. 

9. Prisoner

This room has no doors in or out, only thick stone walls. 

A room empty apart from painting supplies and a jug of water, home to the weaver Jarde. He has spent weeks here, Puyinthel coming daily to ask questions. How did you feel when you were born? Please, draw an image of yourself. What day do you think it is? What is your favorite color? 

Jarde is unharmed. Not even shackled - where would he go, except down a 60 foot drop? When Puyinthel bores of his answers, he will be hurled from the Panopticon to break on the stones of the Graveyard (hex B1). 

10. The Pupil

There is no path to the center of the eye. 3 doorways stare out in each direction, but there are no bridges. Jump.

When you do, you reach a massive domed room, dominated by a raised-relief map of the island. If you look closely, you can see tiny figures walk across it - and tiny figures standing in the Panopticon, looking closely at a raised-relief map of the island. The map updates automatically to show the nearest seven hexes.

If you have escaped Puyinthel's notice, he is here, absentmindedly painting a figure for the castaway Siwatu Amaechi.

Puyinthel has 10 HP, and is unarmored, though he carries a finely-made cane-sword (+1, 1d6, worth 350 gp) to protect himself from the Error. His Crown is a 10 meter (30 foot) radius marked out around him in staring holographic eyes. Within this radius he has complete control of reality. He could do whatever he wishes - his favorite options are

a) to annihilate you, layer by minuscule layer like an MRI scan, so every particle of you can be viewed and known.

b) to replace you, first disintegrating your brain and then constructing a new one with a set of forged experiences that make you fully loyal to Puyinthel.

On his turn, he can do either of these to one person inside his Crown. Neither provides a save.

 

For G L Å U G U S T 2 0 2 5 - prompt 3:1 "wizard tower dungeon (must have a gimmick) OR train dungeon (NOT too linear)" 

Those Fragile Bridges (Aclas Hexcrawl)

Far in the south of Aclas, in the Yaladine archipelago, is an island, and a looming tower. Sailors call it the Lure - they say it glows at night, and is the home of misshapen beasts and a cult who wishes to flood the world - so they keep their distance.

It is, in truth, a prison, or a toybox. Domain of the Mystic who calls himself Puyinthel - mystic of the focus Control. From his tower he watches you dance, and he calls you his. Escape attempts are untenable as long as he lives - from miles away he looks down, reading thoughts and breaking necks.

Your parents lived and died on this island. You don't plan to do the same.

Random Encounters

2. The mystic's attention - he checks a snapshot of your fears, emotional state, and obsessions (as Insight) for anything out of the ordinary. The hair on the back of your neck rises.

3. 2d4 Pursuers (1 HD, shields, swords, shortbows) - Puyinthel's guards and killers, armed with figments of his imagination. Barbed arrows damage you again each time you move between hexes - but they'll catch you if you slow. If you roll an 8, this is the full set of Pursuers and includes Inga.

4. A cow-sized nudibranch (stats as carrion crawler) festooned with Sithican decorations in verdigrised bronze.

5. A recurring NPC - if the players have met no one, a fisher from Home out on a pleasant walk :)

6. 1d6 predatory lungfish (1 HD, slow movement, ambush predators, bite +1 1d6) drag themselves out from the damp earth.

7. Siwatu Amaechi, a hapless soldier (2 HD, big spear, real armor) from some island or another, now washed up on the Lure. 

8. The Ghost.

Hex Keys

A1: Home

A fishing village of a couple hundred - with no boats. Its residents dive, or fish with spears, but never further from shore than they can swim.  

Well, almost no boats - Puyinthel's eight Pursuers live in a long hall, and keep one among them to hunt for those desperate few who try to swim. Their foreign captain (and Duelist A, with the Vom Tag technique of her former Ossean training), Inga, tires of this post - Puyinthel provides them little for their loyalty. She is, in a way, just as much a captive as you. If you hunted down the deserter in C2, this would be enough to turn her towards you, and away from the Mystic.

A2: Sea Serpent

A great snake made of gold writhes offshore - it has been dying, bleeding glowing ichor into the sea, for decades. Ever since Puyinthel struck it down.

Serpentists see this as an extremely heavy-handed and not particularly positive omen - and for more materialist PCs, the dying snake means anyone swimming or sailing through this region has a 4-in-6 chance to be crushed, drowned, reduced to splinters, et cetera. 

Its blood ignites like gasoline. Its hatred of Puyinthel burns like the sun.

B1: Graveyard

Where the Mystic leaves broken toys. Sometimes, whether he doesn't trust them or because he's just bored, someone from Home gets an invitation to his tower - and when he's tired of them, they find themselves thrown, bodily, to the west to shatter on the ground.

These people are only buried at night, when the villagers think the Mystic isn't looking. 

And during these nights, and their vigils, a ghost stalks the graveyard. It tears at its own grave, howls at the rising sun, howls at the Panopticon, screams and screams and screams and screams its childrens' names and its parents' names and then, in the middle of a syllable, falls silent.

If it were given someone to possess, it could think. And it could take revenge. It knows this - and it screams this, in those moments when it is conscious enough to communicate.

B2: Panopticon

The pillar of the tyrant, manifestation of Control. 

B3: Shipwreck

Once the pirate ship Never Seen This Man In My Life, Officer - now, a ruin, scythed apart by coral and stones. Inside is a sole survivor, mind fizzing from exposure to Puyinthel, maddened by the belief that he is that mystic.

On his hip is an immense break-action pistol (1d8+4 damage, ignores armor, two-handed) - four brass cartridges jangle in his pouch, and a fifth is loaded.

C1: Sithican Temple

A buried ruin, carved with angular squid. Its half-sunken, gateless door is just large enough for you to crawl through, into a claustrophobic tunnel flooded with sticking, drowning mud.

Past this, the temple opens - a dark room, filled up to your knees in silty water. Rolling in it, desperate to stop itself from asphyxiating, is a multicolored cow-sized sea slug (stats as carrion crawler). 

Behind the nudibranch, on a mud-covered stone plinth, is a pearlescent chalice of piercingly blue water. Those who sip from it feel as if they are drowning, and then "die", for three hours - they still move, and speak, and think, but according to spells, spirits, anyone you ask, and mind-reading, there is nothing here but a corpse. There are six doses.

C2: Deserter's Camp

Surrounded by noisemakers on strings. In the center, Matvei fails to sleep. He fled from the Pursuers out of conscience - unable to bear any more time acting as the Mystic's boot.

Inga will execute him if he is captured - she has a reputation to uphold. 

For G L Å U G U S T 2 0 2 5 - prompt 5:1 "Tiny regional hexcrawl" 

Freak People (Gateway GLOG)

Now that I'm headed down the road of "running" "a campaign" again, I returned to Gateway, my scheme for a pick-up game to play with the one or two people who are guaranteed to show up when the rest of my players flake. 

While poking at it I realized - what's the point of an overly-colorful, largely non-serious Fantasy Setting™ without the opportunity to play as some variety of nonhuman weirdo? I normally lean towards all-human settings, but Gateway is, as much as it's anything, a winking revival of the way I wrote in 2017; powered purely by half-memories of 3.5e homebrew websites.

And thus - freak people.

1. Human
They sure are.

Reroll nothing.

Benefit: keep a 2nd item between sessions.

that's it. i don't know what to tell you. go get a job.

2. Ogre
Some say every ogre is the reincarnation of a saint from ages past.

Reroll STR and take the higher.

Benefit: put a * next to your STR score. Roll checks with it only for superhuman tasks (picking a guy up and hucking him like a catapult, benchpressing a car, crashing through a stone wall).

Drawback: you must fail a STR check to not immediately destroy pathetic human items (doors, levers, tools, pets) when interacting with them. Your soul is immense - you glow like the sun to anyone who can see them.

3. Millisecond Dragon
Each of the 23 hours of the day has a grand dragon for a living avatar - and it continues downward, with dragons of half-hours and minutes and seconds and tenths-of-a-second and so forth becoming more humanoid as their domains shorten.

Reroll DEX and take the higher.

Benefit: once a session, shoot a 3d6 damage cone of either ice (for the pinkish-orange brood of the dragons of the Dawn), fire (for the sky-blue brood of the dragons of Noon) or lightning (for the purple brood of the Dusk). Probably best used to melt through steel, make ice platforms, or do some other OSR puzzle gibberish.

Drawback: save or pick up shiny objects.

4. Cultivator
Bug-men of the prismatic wastelands to the west of Gateway, emerging from their holes to see what all the fuss is about.

Reroll CON and take the higher.

Benefit: burrow through soil as fast as a person walks, climb walls at running speed.

Drawback: bright light provokes a save vs. fear.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/1d9X - yes this is the same picture i used for cultivators in 2018 we already agreed that i get to be lazy with gateway

5. Elf
Immortal(?), meditative wanderers of the desert of ice.

Reroll INT and take the higher.

Benefit: around your neck is an amulet, holding the soul of a parent, a favored aunt, a friend from the army, or so on. As long as you wear it, you can speak with the dead. If you shatter it, the soul within possesses a target of your choice, then escapes to the afterlife. You could still speak with the dead - but all they would do is howl.

Drawback: dogs and other domesticated animals attack you on sight.

6. Visitor
Honestly, nobody knows what your deal is. Worshipers of living iron stars, they say. 5 feet tall and stick-thin, covered in multicolored scale-petals and ridged patterns.

Reroll WIS and take the higher.

Benefit: once per session, release petal-dust that forces all nearby to Save versus murderous wrath.
 
Drawback: when startled, save versus doing the aforementioned. (doesn't count towards your limit, at least)

7. Myconid
A statuesque social form of the Motherland, sent to aid that vast fungus's geopolitical ambitions.

Reroll CHA and take the higher.

Benefit: your mycelial form is silent when walking or falling. You never make any sound you did not intend.

Drawback: once, when it is least convenient, your sleeper agent programming will switch on.

End-of-Year Slushpost

I wrote it, and now you're stuck reading it.

Sewer Rats Epithets

Every two years I seem to doodle with another pick-up game to never use. Gateway this year, Orbiters Local 519 in 2022, and Sewer Rats back in 2020. While digging through my drafts from back when I used GMBinder, a HTML editor for making "things that kind of look like 5e trade dress if you squint", I found these four levelless non-classes for Tim B.'s Squires Errant. They're... four? years old, if I had to guess.

(S) is a spell that can only be used once, (E) is an item you can lose, anything else is just a skill. 2024-Archon's notes in italics.

Veteran - Survivor of the newest of the City’s expansionist wars, now haunted by their violence.

Paranoia: when you enter a room, you suspect three objects within are traps. If there is a trap, it will be one of those three. (Can you imagine playing a game with this? It'd take forever!)     

Surplus Arquebus (E): a heavy rifle (2d8 damage, 1d6 ammunition, two-handed, loud).    

Your Friend's Ghost (S): cut down in the war, now whispering constantly of better times. It can be sent to attempt to haunt a target - they must Save, taking 1d12 damage on a failure and being possessed on a success. (The effect-on-passed-save is a nice trick, I think.)

Vermin Druid - Even in the core of the City, there is still life: fleas, spiders, and rats.

Rat Form (S): become a rat for 1d6 Exploration Turns.    

Swarming Insects (S): a room fills with flying, stinging insects for 1d4 Combat Rounds. Everyone except for you is either blinded or takes 1d4 damage per Combat Round.    

Polluted Blood: you are immune to poison, and your blood burns things who come in contact with it. Melee attackers take 1d4 damage after they hit you.

Urchin - Abandoned by the world, you march into the sewers out of desperation.

Pickpocket: if someone isn't paying attention to you, you can steal anything they aren't holding without a roll.    

Escape Artist: you can fit through any space larger than your head at normal speed, and escape grapples or being tied up in one Combat Round without a roll.    

Inconspicuous: even if a fight has broken out, you won't be attacked as long as you hide, cringe, and otherwise appear to be harmless. (Should be "are attacked last", probably.)

Gutter Alchemist - description not found.

Waxy Green Brick (E): when consumed, sends the afflicted into a nerve-deadened frenzy. For 2d6 Combat Rounds they can act twice per Round, and damage done to them is ignored until the effect ends. After the effect ends, they are disoriented (check penalty placeholder thanks, past archon) for the same duration.     

Neon Blue Vial (E): when consumed, the drinker becomes invisible for 1d4 Exploration Turns. After the effect ends, they are blinded for the same duration. 

Pink Bottle (E): when poured on to a person or object, it becomes weightless for 1d6 Exploration Turns. At the end of the duration, it becomes twice as heavy for the same duration. This will, generally, immobilize people.

Purifier Novitiate - your creed is to protect the City from sin: monsters, strong drink, foreigners, and so on.       

Smite (S): As part of a melee attack, your crown of fire flares, and you add 1d12 to your damage. This can also be used to destroy anything not bigger than a car and not stronger than steel. 

Imperious Visage: you may reroll Reaction Rolls, but positive results on Reaction Rolls are terrified instead of friendly. If given a chance, they will run or betray you. (I'm stealing this later.)

The third Purifier Novitiate ability is missing, and the sixth class just has the words "bear trap" on an empty page.

GLOG Class: Psychopomp

A: Never Spoke in Prose, Smoke Cloud
B: Pennies for Charon, Prophetic
C: Empty Eye Sockets
D: Undying

Never Spoke in Prose
The Flame (different from a flame, though you wouldn't expect others to understand) instructs you - there are those who have escaped their destined fate. The Flame is meant to seek only the undead, but it is tired, and the divine laws are long. For each person you kill that it asked you to, you get enough goodwill to make up an excuse for why someone you want dead has cheated the wheel.

The Flame knows where your target lives. It grants you Advantage on your first to-hit and damage rolls against them.

Smoke Cloud
Turn into a black mist to zoop through vents and other narrow openings. You, importantly, can't fly - the smoke is too heavy to just hover into the air.

Pennies for Charon
Whenever you kill someone, you find a pair of coins behind their eyes. You can give these to the Flame, and for each 3 pairs it hands you a gun, 1d4x10 rounds of ammunition, or a grenade.

Prophetic
The Flame gives you 1 piece of information about your target when you begin seeking them - perhaps it tells you that they tend to leave their back door unlocked, or that they keep an antique machine gun in their basement.

Empty Eye Sockets
You can see without issue in the dark.

Undying
You do not need to eat, sleep, drink, or breathe. Spend your free time watching grass grow, or listen to a calming symphony.

GLOG Class (Fragment): Antipaladin

Sometimes you want "deep worldbuilding", "complex sociology", "multifaceted problems", and other things of that ilk. Other times you just want to stick your players in front of a guy in armor with spikes on it.

A: Asymptomatic Carrier, +1 Attack

B: Contact Outsider

C: Shrike Ideology, Smite

D: Scatter the Chaff

i forgot what these abilities were. such is life.

Five Dungeon Concepts for Gateway

1. Out in the frozen desert sulks a ruin built by the Elfs and their armies of the living dead in past ages. Seek souls bound in iron, wands (a forgotten Elfish invention) of Bones to Dust, and sealed great evils of past ages, but beware refracted laser-traps, prismatic spirits, and sealed great evils of past ages.
2. As a show of force, the Imperial army burned a district of the city to the ground, then wandered off (much to the chagrin of the city's governor). If you wait, on moonless nights, you can still see part of it - a single tenement spun from gleaming silver. Seek liquid memories, items that can touch dreams, and the treasured possessions of the missing, but beware Imperial traps, false floors, and the dawn.
   
3. An abandoned Imperial cathedral has pride of place in the richest quarter of Gateway, untouched for fear of divine or legal reprisal. Seek its bell (rumored to be a casting-bell keyed to Earthquake), armor of imperial paladins, and huge piles of sanctified platinum, but beware anchorites in the walls, bell-armed gargoyles, and direct contact with the Imperial god.
   
4. Optimists and fools say Imbril:Grove:Acosta:Aelrue, a Gestalt of four, retreated into his buried sanctum to plan a terrible revenge on Imperial governance. You don't care, you just want to root through his wine cellar. Seek the aforementioned wine, abundant spell scrolls, and the thrice-real-size golden statue of himself I:G:A:A conjured as a joke, and beware the 8 MD wizard who stuffed so much spiritual mass into a single body he leaves afterimages whenever he moves, the thrice-real-size golden statue of himself, and more than a few of those abundant spell scrolls.
5. The governor's family lives in a many-roomed mansion out on the edge of town. Now, the mansion itself is impregnable - but in the basement (sealed to the guards and almost always unoccupied) one could seek occult blackmail, daemonic heirlooms, and the family tutelary spirit (one of the few to survive the executions) - but beware geases, curses, and the unexpected appearance of the rich and powerful.

GLOG Class: Demonologist
A: Familiar, +1 MD
B: Advisor, +1 MD
C: Talents, +1 MD
D: Multitasking, +1 MD

a hideous abomination

Familiar: after six years of study in the demonological arts, and weeks of blood, sweat and tears (mostly blood, and not all of it yours) you have summoned it - a horrible creature, a wide-eyed round head with sticklike limbs. It peeps and wheedles, pulling on your sleeve to beg for crumbs of magic. It is intangible, and imperceptible to all but you.

It cannot be separated from you - if you are ever more than ten feet away, the familiar is dragged to you by an irresistible force.

It is, to put it nicely, "charmingly incapable" - apt to become distracted, sleepy, confused, or bored unless watched over.

MD can be fed to the creature to:
- make one of its limbs twist into the real world, letting it pull levers, push buttons, or start poking people. 4 MD thus means four limbs, providing the familiar the ability to interact with the world as a human does.
- make the familiar perceptible to others with one sense (sight, sound, et cetera) - more MD move it up the scale from "weird little guy" to "baron of Hell".
- allow the creature to move 10 [meters/tens of meters/hundreds of meters/kilometers] away from you

Advisor
The familiar can, with MD payment, answer questions on matters of natural philosophy, botany, and rhetoric. The more MD expended, the more useful the answer.

Talents
The familiar gains a skill, as a PC would have. In matters related to this skill it is reliable, focused, and capable.

Multitasking
You wake up one day to find *two* of these things. You definitely didn't summon that second one. Hm.

The City of Gateway, Two GLOG Classes (sort of) and a Sign I Play Too Much D&D

Essentially all of the dicéd gaming I've done in the last four years has been online, providing great opportunity for all manner of flaking. I've heard the reasonable solution to this problem is to "not have a session that week", but my solution has tended to be taking whatever one or two severely brainwormed players actually made it and forcing them to throw together OSE characters for a one-shot. 

As these impromptu games have repeated, I started thinking about solidifying them - keeping the same setting on the GM's end and the same characters on the players' end, mostly just to see if it would be fun. And so, I did - creating a (rather thin) framework for some picaresque gaming, with an assumed few months between sessions, both for players and PCs.

System and Classes

The rules are minimal, bordering on nonexistent. Stat checks, attack rolls, HP, death, whatever, are all as G20 (by deus ex parabola) (except for the derived stats thing because I can't be bothered). The only changes are in equipment: players choose a Kit during character creation. They start every session with everything listed in their kit, and have two slots for items they want to keep between sessions. During the adventure you can carry more, or accidentally drop all your kit's gear down a bottomless pit, but during the assumed weeks of carousing between sessions, you lose all the former and regain all the latter.

This also applies to money - in between sessions, you spend everything on food, booze, and company, like any sword-and-sorcery protagonist worth the name. Then, when yet another vast hoard is spent (and turned into XP), you return to adventure.

In an attempt to reduce the tax on memory for characters you're probably only playing a few times a year, their rules and progression are part of their character sheets: one for the Rogue, a thief/fighter, and one for the Gestalt, the setting's wizard.

The Setting

Is, because I thought it would be funny, the first setting I ever had. Gateway, the last stop. A city on the edge of an empire that rewrote the earth; an empire that summoned a great and terrible god, who now stretches across the sky with the moon at his feet and the sun as a jewel in his crown. 

But their capitals and their glories are distant - Gateway's imperial governor rages and foams in his new-built palace, but his conscript-legions are thin and his hold on the city frail, even after a roving army was sent to put a troublesome district to the torch a decade ago. 

Gateway heaves with thieves, refugees, four-eyed Gestalt deserters, ogres, bugmen, and so on. A minidungeon waits under every manhole cover, and a heist in every locked room. "Deep worldbuilding", "complex sociology" and other such things are thrown right out.

Six One-Shot Ideas So I Can Remember Them In Like Six Months When I Actually Have Cause To Run This

1. The distant Motherland, a vast fungus slowly crawling onto the stage of geopolitics, has sent a delegation of myconids (tall, chiseled, androgynous, and impeccably "dressed", as all the Motherland's social forms are) to make inroads with Gateway's governor - and like any Motherlandic mission, they come with a convoy of gifts. Valuable gifts...
2. A week ago, the crime lord Iazelmei promised you generous payment in return for a certain gem. You fulfilled your end of the deal, but she won't. Steal it back from her ship, the Sky Flashed Bright - and don't mind the fact she's a dragon.
   
3. An Imperial paladin is spending a week in Gateway to do something or other for the Governor. Make sure he never leaves. Don't worry, he'll be easy to notice with all the bells, and all the spikes.
   
4. Out in the lavender desert past Gateway, where the stars shine through the day, the sand is interspersed with shards of ice, and the light breaks into the secret 8th color (which, it turns out, is Ghosts), sigils are being drawn. One at dusk, one at dawn, each one in a straight line closer to Gateway. Someone should probably see... why.
   
5. A trio of runaway Gestalts are moving through Gateway, pursued by Imperial scouts. Get the wizards out before the Governor gets involved.
   
6. The ol' Bricked Up Noble Mansion (Demons In It).

And if they ever tire of city adventures, I can drag the PCs to the door of any prewritten dungeon I wish. It's Efficient™.

Through the Looking Glass (Class: Sharpshooter)

A draft trade with Locheil of the Nothic's Eye - a class (and Gonne Rules) for his interwar setting, Aclas. And the product of me realizing that I stopped making Blog Posts™ because I kept spiraling into larger "required" scopes, when actually you rats will read any old garbage. :)

The heartless symphonist of gunmetal and exploding limbs – the conductor of lead, and the rattle of gunfire is their drum, as they hammer on and on and on.

a front-page news story - what could an aspiring gunman want more?

A: Like a Limb, Quickdraw, +1 to-hit with guns
B: Feats of Accuracy
C: Compulsive Reloader, +1 to-hit with guns
D: Line Up, Knock Down

Like a Limb
Reloading no longer takes an action, and clearing jams only takes an action.

Quickdraw
If you have a loaded gun, you get to fire before initiative is rolled. “While you’re talking to the magnate, the door starts opening a-” “I shoot them!” “You turn the corner and you-” “Shoot him!” and so on. No hesitation.

Feats of Accuracy
Your gun is always aimed, and damage dice from firearms explode in your hands. If you aim anyway, in your double-aimed state your sight follows the bullet. Shoot through a window and get a slow-motion snapshot of the room behind it.

Compulsive Reloader
Buy cartridges? For money? Absolutely repulsive - just make some of your own. With an evening of work and 20sp in materials, you can put together 1d6 cartridges with any of the above Tags.

If a bullet is carved with a name the carver (which does not necessarily need to be you) hates, its range increment becomes one mile.

Line Up, Knock Down
Gunshots cleave.  

Guns, Rules For Them

(locheil did not finish the rules which means i get to post them now. i cannot be stopped)

Unless you are bulletproof, having a gun pressed to your head or vital organs and fired point blank is a save vs. death. (Well - I think it should just be death, but somebody has mercy in his heart.)

Guns are light (one-handed, 1d6 damage), medium (two-handed, 1d8 damage) and heavy (two-handed, 1d10 damage) like standard weapons. 

All guns deal +4 damage and ignore armour unless it is bulletproof. 

Range Penalty - you get -X to Hit, where X is the number of 20 metre increments between you and the target (-1 at 20 metres, -2 at 40, -3 at 60).  

You can spend a turn aiming beforehand to cut the penalty in half (or, in simpler terms, to increase the increments to 40 metres.)

Scopes give +X to Hit, where X is their magnification. Scopes are ineffective when within [X]*10 Metres, with the exception of 1X scopes. (See what I did there?)

Rolling a 1 when attacking with a gun indicates a jam (dirty firing pins, vis-generated water (or, with repeated fire, ice) in the action, spring problems). The gun must be cleared of the jam with a full turn before it fires again. Poor handling, lack of maintenance, and other such things increase the jam range.

There are some other tags:

Buckshot - When you are within 10 metres, a given shot cannot do less than half damage. 

Incendiary - Whatever the bullet hits is ignited.

Armour Piercing  - The shot ignores all physical armour. 

Silver - Does full damage to spirits, demons and causes vis to explode. On a jam, the gun explodes. 

Wolfram - The bullet cannot be affected by magic. 

Due to the terms of the Treaty of Kelos, magazine-loading and rotating-barrel guns are banned to maintain “decency in warfare”, along with a lot of other things. The primary consequence is that guns are single-shot unless stated otherwise. 

Only fighters can move and reload on the same turn. 

Manufacturers add little quibbles and variances to guns:

• Cabro - High-Power - +2 Damage, but don’t make Heavy guns.
  A Vanchan company, best known for producing guns which combine portability and power. 

• Bela-Maximis - Reliability - always jams on a 1 or 2, no matter what you’ve done with the thing.

A Hevash company - their products never work well, but at least they never get worse.

• Kataram Trigonometrics Division - Artillery - make Superlative (mounted, 2d6 damage) anti-material rifles. They jam “excitingly”.
  A Nevechi manufactorum, previously specialising in the production of howitzers and arms for Automatic Infantry.

• Carigian - Elegance - +1 to Hit, but don’t make Light guns.
  A Tivgarine company, best known for producing elegant and accurate hunting rifles. 

• Grötram - Modularity - Repairing or Modifying a Grötram gun costs half.
  A Zarumaan industrial collective, best known for making trucks. But they make guns too. 

• Ankurav Heavy Industrial - Double-barreled - It’s technically legal!
  An Iskorian corporation, who make everything - and can’t help but jump through a loophole.

• Wintersage & Green - Concealability - thinned-out Light guns are unnoticeable without a pat-down, folding Medium guns can be hidden just as well under a large coat. They don’t make Large guns, for obvious reasons.
  A Tindavi company best known for definitely not making the gun that wounded a Niveran ambassador.
  
  

• Seidau - Reliability - Reroll jams, but don’t make Medium guns.
  An Ukalt workshop known for making precisely two types of really reliable guns. 

• Federation Workshop - Precision Machining - Critical hits deal an extra 1d6 damage.
  An Athrunnar company, privatised from a Union state operation. Known for service rifles.
  
  

• Armos Foundries - Magazines - Guns have magazines but are illegal and cost quadruple.
  A technically-Surammar “company” operating in a legal greyzone. The only source of new models of illegal magazine-loaders. 

 

The Short-Lived Book (GLOG Spells)

I was born with my siblings in the spring, when the frost left, and our seeds sprouted. The rest of us howled and shouted, and shook our thorns - but I was weak, and thus fearful. I fled, out among the plants-who-stay-still, and the graves of our forefathers. 

There is where it spoke to me - the shapeless shape, the rattling sound in the voices of the leaves. And it said: your stem is soft and thin - your thorns unsharpened. I offer you a guide. An angel. You are doomed by birth, you will live only a year - but I can show you the way to life eternal.

It asked no price of me. It lied.

But I was lost, and couldn't understand - so I leapt at the offer. The voice raised a hand, and my many-legged angel took its first breath.

Invent Wasp

A hand-sized wasp-shape (1 HP, no AC, flies) crawls out from the earth. It loves you like a dog - you can give it scritches, if you so desire. After [worst] hours, it vanishes. For every MD invested in the spell, choose two details:

• A crop in the manner of the Masarinae - it can carry your pollen messages.
• Great size, equal to yours - it can be ridden, with care.
• A terrible venom, in the manner of the Pompilidae - insects are paralyzed, and men are stricken with agony.
• Production of honey, in the manner of the Brachygastra.
• Grinding mandibles (grinds wood to paper, attacks plants as a light weapon), in the manner of the Polistinae - beware, for these are killing weapons, and marks of a cruel familiar.
• Striking coloration, in the manner of the Chrysididae. 
• Skill in pottery, in the manner of the Eumeninae. 
• The ability to communicate with you, in taps and scents. Through this detail, I learned that it is the same wasp that is summoned, every time the spell is cast.
• Proficiency in the works of the mine, in the manner of the Sphecidae.
  
• Bringing with it a fig, in the manner of the Agaonidae.
  
• Parasitism, in the manner of the Ichneumonidae - anything the wasp can fit its legs around vanishes with it when the duration ends.
  
• A warm, soft coat of fur, in the manner of the Mutillidae.
  

Months passed, and summer came. But my angel could not guide me home - in fact, I began to suspect it meant to point me away. When I stopped drinking, and reached the dark, it spoke to me again, in the patterns of the flowers. Fear not, ever - for I can show you how to be alone.

Bitterness

For [sum] minutes, you are shrouded. When cast with one MD, people will avoid you out of politeness. With two, they avoid you out of fear. With three, anyone approaching you must save or take [best] damage and be turned away. With four, you are invisible for the duration.

Autumn came, and my wings grew. Then, they fell out - a nutritional deficiency, perhaps, as I had been far from good soil or water. As I clutched them and wept, the voice returned. Are you still so fragile? So weak? Take the lesson of the tree - there is no virtue greater than resilience.

I took my wings in hand, and stripped trees of their bark with my thorns.

Needle and Thread

Sow a piece of a plant to another - the larger part must Save (with a +[dice] bonus) or die.  

By the time of the snows, I was prepared. I was taller than my lost siblings, I was surrounded by angels, and my gaze turned animals away. But no strong stem could turn away death, and I felt its hands at my back.

When I laid down, ready for it to take me, the voice screamed in the wind. You have done my will. For it lied when it said there was no price. The snow covered me. I give you what I promised.

Secret Hollow

Cover yourself in snow, sand, or soil. For [sum] months, time does not pass inside the hollow.

Life eternal. 

All Roads Lead to Molont (Encounter Tables)

While my Lanthanide Horizon campaign grinds up to speed, I am haunted by entirely unrelated things - in particular, Skerples's Bosola, a 14th-century near-Italy that is certainly having... a time of it. The Archpriest Simon II rules from the city of Molont, while the other Archpriest, Ignatius I, is hosted by the wealthy nation of Pellamy.

To the surprise of no one, they do not like each other very much.

While Bosola is, in theory, united by their support for Simon II, the peninsula's many cities are too busy knifing each other to... do anything for him. The Church's funds, split between the warring Archpriests, are used to bid for the same foreign mercenaries that the cities seek.

Everything is on fire. Cities are spasming in revolution, or up for sale, or besieged. Mercenary companies (such as the PCs'!) march from town to town, working for Simon II one day, the city of Arda the next, and the nearly powerless Emperor of Grept (technically, legally, owner of all the parts of Bosola that aren't personal property of the Archpriest) on the third.

Skerples's wonderful pointcrawl map

This is, secretly, a GLOGtober post; random encounters on ancient roads - older than the Archpriests, they say. 1d6 for encounter type, 1d6 for encounter.

1. Mercenary Encounters

1. Six soldiers from the Sable Company trudge down roads and through fields, dragging a cannon behind them. They are terribly lost, and there's a decent chance they'll get their cannon stuck in a ditch before they find their way back.
   
2. The foreign Company of Saint Beria, hired by Pellamy and the Archpriest Ignatius I. Only around two hundred of them are left - and nobody's paying them to kill you.
3. An exceptionally foreign mercenary company of unknown name and unknown tactics, five dozen strong.
   
4. Two dozen more members of the Sable Company, who haven't been paid in months. They aren't "sliding into" brigandage, they're reveling in brigandage.
   
5. The core one hundred soldiers of the Company of Sunrise, along with their leader Azzone of Verrino, heading to a city to camp. It is said that Azzone has the patronage of a demon, who predicts the future for him - but only on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays (Saturday and Sunday are the days of the Saints and the Authority, respectively, so no demon could issue predictions related to them. The lack of Friday, however, has no precedent.)
   
6. The entire 1000 man Peerless Company, along with a village worth of camp followers. May as well be a town on the move. Last hired by the Archpriest Simon II, and now returning to Molont.
   

2. Papal Encounters

1. A bishop rides down the road in a large carriage, surrounded by servants and guards. Get out of the way.
2. A papal messenger, running their horses ragged. They will pay you handsomely for yours (if you have any), and then return to their frantic sprint. Their letter concerns the current and future positions of the Peerless Company - and would be worth so, so much money to the forces of Ignatius I.
3. A menagerie of lions, leopards, elephants, peacocks, falcons, and some kind of terribly tall, long-necked camel, herded down the road to be given to the Archpriest.
   
4. A crowd of runaway monks, who have no idea what to do now. Attaching themselves to a mercenary company wouldn't be so bad...
   
5. Fifty members of the Archpriest's (50/50 chance which) personal soldiers. Impeccable, imperious, impervious. They're even taller than you.
   
6. An absurd spectacle. A twelve-wheeled, two-story carriage, flanked by hundreds of mounted people. The Archpriest Simon II, out of Molont and on the road... or so it seems. In truth, this is a body double, sent on some kind of convoluted mission. On the other hand, a copy of the Archpriest may be worth just as much as the real thing.
   

3. Civilian Encounters

1. A merchant caravan, loaded with grain, gold, and armed guards.
   
2. A small hunting party from a local village.
   
3. A princeling of some city or another, blessed with a complete lack of self-preservation and, to balance it out, an immense sense of self-importance.
   
4. Four pilgrims, headed to some tiny shrine nestled in the absolute middle of nowhere.
   
5. A gang of bandits, who only realize how large a group the PCs travel with after jumping out at them.
6. A crowd of refugees - their town has just been sacked by mercenaries. They don't know why. They don't know who.
   

18th century engraving of mercenary company leader Luchino Visconti, by, as far as I know, an anonymous artist

 

4. Villages & Buildings

1. A small village, currently in the midst of their spring festival. They absolutely do not, even slightly, want a mercenary company rolling into town, but they can't do much of anything about it.
   
2. A looming castle-tower on a rock outcropping. Still occupied, and subservient to the nearest city on the point map.
   
3. A looming castle-tower on a rock outcropping. Still occupied - the home of a cackling, theatrical Sorcerer. Powerful, independent, and unpredictable. If you're lucky, they'll think you're amusing.
   
4. A very, very old church, now in ruins. There is a relic inside, of some near-forgotten saint. Unfortunately, you'll be struck by lightning if you steal it.
   
5. A town with a large portion of the underfunded, poorly-managed, and generally kind of incompetent Sable Company parked in front of the gate. They would, of course, like to come in. The town would, of course, prefer if they did not.
   
6. An orchard!
   

5. Wild Things

1. A swarm of some kind of small songbird blots out the sun - then descends to steal food, hide in places, peck ineffectually at people, and carry off anything they can use for nests.
2. Someone, somewhere, lost track of a flock of sheep. Now they're yours.
3. Back away slowly - your horse, or your foot, just about trod on a snake.
   
4. A tree, bearing golden fruit. Each and every fruit is electrified at all times.
   
5. A herd of wild boars. Probably not the best thing to interact with.
   
6. Some kind of awful chimera - the head of a bull, the legs of an ant, the arms of a man.
   

6. Encounters with the Supernatural

1. A demon, sent from below to tempt the souls of humankind. Do you want gold? Health? To know the secret language of the birds? All is yours - just sign here.
   
2. A walking dead man, an agent of the terrible Necromancer, about whom little is known. The dead man cannot be killed again, but he can be dismantled.
   
3. A Sorcerer, riding a mount of blown glass they projected from their mind.
   
4. Ghostly fires and the sound of distant music. The lights are coming over the hill - they are getting closer.
   
5. A circle of standing stones, crackling with static at all times of day and night. Step through and find yourself in the same place, but a distant time.
   
6. A crowd of runaway monks - secretly scholars of occult forces. Might be able to lay down curses with a set of secret hand-signs, or might not; but I wouldn't risk it, personally.
   

I Caught You (GLOG Class: Revenant)

(another draft trade/theft, this time from EosOfDawn - any non-Archonful decisions in formatting or design are probably because of them)    

Maybe you deserved it - the bullet over the poker table, the knife in the alleyway. Or maybe no one deserves anything. 

Skills: 1. Cattle Herding 2. Cattle Rustling 3. Knotwork

Items: Light Accursed Six-Shooter, Medium Blackened Levergun, all-black concealing outfit, 40ft. of hangman’s rope, 20 bullets, 2 Devil’s Gifts.

A: Dead//Quick, Contract, +1 to-hit

B: The Knight, Extra Attack

Dead//Quick

Dead: you do not need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep. You are, in the literal sense, unkillable - while you can be maimed to immobility or nonfunction, you cannot die, and any injuries short of a lost limb repair themselves in the next new moon. In the presence of your Vendetta, that hated rival who killed you, and who you now live to kill, this flips to Quick.

Quick: you can die now, I’m sorry to say, but you lose that skeletal shamble and come back to life, almost - and you can move a lot faster when there’s no biology telling you what to do. You win initiative automatically.

Contract

Once your Vendetta, whether that’s one person or a dozen-man posse, are all in the ground, your time is up. One last choice - let your soul return to Judgment, dissolving to dust (and allowing you, the player, to make a new character already at template B, or template C if you have the B template in Revenant), or serve the Devil eternally as his Right Hand - no longer needing food or drink and always winning Initiative, but no longer regenerating and subject to repossession if your body is damaged beyond use. And, of course, the Devil has uses for an agent on Earth.

The Knight

It can be lonely, with only the desert to listen to. Whenever the sun does not shine, you can bring a horse, or something close to it, to you - an assemblage of bones and burning embers, as fast as any horse but never tiring.

And, by now, you’re starting to understand your situation. When your Vendetta dies, you don’t need to surrender, not to Heaven nor Hell - all you really need is another target. As long as you’re able to chain together new Vendettas with people who have greatly harmed you, you don’t need to rest. Your work is not yet done.

Devil’s Gifts

1. A second light Accursed Six-Shooter - anyone killed by it is sent directly to Hell, and its damage dice explode in a flare of hellfire. 

2. Three sticks of dynamite - each one detonates completely silently and with a bitter green light. 

3. Light bowie knife - in its reflection, everyone is a corpse, except you - you haven’t looked that healthy a day in your life.

4. Bullet with your own name on it. Whenever it’s fired, it comes right back to you, perfectly intact and ready to be recased - even if it has to go around corners or through walls to do it.

5. Holes in your own skeletal arm - you can whistle through them, and when you do everyone in earshot hears Absolutely Nothing.

6. Turquoise poker chip, theoretically worth $5,000.

7. Deck of 52 cards, all marked - no matter what, any game you play with them you lose. Pull ten of them and they’ll murmur about your future, then turn to ash. The two left over, I’ve heard, tell you if you’ll get into Heaven.

8. Midnight Brandy - smells unnervingly of meat. Whoever drinks it vomits up a near-mummified rattlesnake; it’ll follow your directions until the next dawn, at which point it will turn to dust.

9. An entire crew-served gatling gun, complete with 100 rounds of ammunition. Impossible to move without a horse, deeply illegal, generally inconvenient, but it’ll turn 25 rounds into a 3d6 damage hail in a 100’ cone.

10. Your own coffin, chained to your ankle. Takes up 5 slots when you carry it on your back but can store an extra 10 slots without encumbering you. The chain is exactly 6 cubits long (about 9 feet) and you get a bad feeling about breaking it.