Archpendix N

The wagon of bands for September 8th - inspirational media (in this case, for Lanthanide Horizon). Like weirdwriter I will be writing this in 15 minutes, though in my case that's because if I think about it for too long I will cringe right out the back of my own head. 

Debt: the First 5000 Years / The Dawn of Everything

David Graeber's Debt is not the origin of my fixation with the gift economy (nor is Marcel Mauss's The Gift), but since I don't recall the source it gets the spot.

Graeber and Wengrow's TDoE is the direct source for Navigator subsistence and seasonal government (based on their description of the Nambikwara) and the institution of the Imperious (based on their description of the Great Sun of the Natchez).

Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants

A good bedrock for the "evil chemistry" pillar of the game - a multi-decade comedy of errors. People burn through concrete with aluminum-fluorine cutting torches, try to shame rocket motors into working correctly by playing the sounds of a launch, blow up extremely valuable scientific equipment, cover acres of woodland in powdered metal, make a fuel so unrelentingly foul and fly-attracting that they seal the container and throw it into the San Francisco bay, and get attacked by "nine thousand demented bats".

Atomic Rockets fulfills a similar role for my obsession with deeply impractical radiator designs.

Firelock 198X is a recent fixation that filled in the vat-grown Firstborn and (in combination with Ignition) has given some 1960s-military-engineer-fever-dream tinges to megastructural technology. 

Also there are a lot of things I haven't read - The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom, which I know only through these blogposts, or the fact that when I really give up I just poke around in front of the Wikipedia pages for political and economic anthropology. Eclipse Phase should clearly have some influence on the transhuman elements of the setting, but I've never read it either, only the yearblogs Farcast and Seedware.

 

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.

Three Oddities

A quick post, since I've spent far too long staring at Isotelus Complex and want to write something absolutely useless. So - three neat factoids, and three unwindings into the supernatural. A slushpost, really.

the circular island El Ojo, spinning around in its equally circular lake, was on the shortlist for this before i decided i was bored

Andrée's Expedition

In 1897, a trio of Swedish explorers launched a hydrogen balloon over the Arctic, hoping to reach the North Pole. Unfortunately, S. A. Andrée's newly-invented steering method (using a set of ropes to slow the balloon's travel, and a set of sails to turn it) was ineffectual, the balloon allowed vast amounts of hydrogen to leak from its envelope, and two days and three-and-a-half hours into the flight, the balloon crashed.

The three then wandered the icescape from the 14th of July until somewhere in early October.

The remains of their expedition were found in 1930 by the Norwegian Bratvaag mission.

|| -- ||

Among the wreckage were a set of empty jars - air, captured high above the Arctic circle. Andrée's journal mentioned stove malfunctions while airborne; strange ones, where firelight could be seen but nothing would be warmed.

Why, in an expedition where they abandoned hundreds of pounds of food, would they hold on to these?

The Bratvaag recovered the jars, the explorers' bodies, and everything else they could find, then returned to Tromsø. The jars were removed from the ship's hold and promptly frostbit the hands of the first, second, and third people to hold them.

The air inside was just as cold as it was two thousand feet above the Arctic, and no matter how long they waited, it never warmed. It was not cold, it was cold, as if it were an immutable law. One jar was put in an oven, and remained unaltered.

Parameteorological research through the 20th century confirmed the presence of this substance, mapped the currents of cold air, and began to collect it.

You do not need the uses of this material recited to you, except for the development of the cold-air balloon - first launched only six months after the Bratvaag arrived in Tromsø - to explore the world behind the mirror.

 

Burned House Horizon

Archaeologists have marked out a region in Southeastern Europe, between 6500 BCE and 2000 BCE, where entire settlements were burned to the ground, seemingly intentionally, and sometimes as often as every 75 years.

This was not war - the same people remained in the same place, building new homes on the ruins of the old. Nor does it seem to be accidental; clay-walled houses were fired by the intensity of the blazes, which would require enormous amounts of extra fuel.

Some suspect this to be a response to the plague, Yersinia pestis - that putting the town to the torch was done to sterilize it.

|| -- || 

Battlefields, prisons, graveyards - and yet, it is the house that is haunted. It watches you, through much of your life, soaking in your successes, your failures, your regrets. How could something see you so deeply and not feel something like love?

And thus, the haunting. Things move, voices whisper, walls bleed - the house tries to speak to you. When you die, or leave, it makes a facsimile, so nothing has to change.

 

They cannot bear to be alone.

In modern times, this process takes decades; but our distant ancestors were accomplished theogonists, back when the noosphere was empty but for the dreams of precambrians. Perhaps their homes lived as soon as they were built. Perhaps they were burned as a funeral for the spirit of the home, or to quiet one that had become too loud.

 

1968 Thule Air Base B-52 Crash

Thule Air Base was a missile launch monitoring station, among other things. To ensure the base's early warning system remained active and operational, an aircraft was set to watch the station at all times - so if it fell silent, they could report an attack or a technical failure.

To save money, this aircraft was simultaneously part of Operation Chrome Dome - where nuclear-armed strategic bombers were kept in the air at all times, ready to retaliate even if a Soviet attack somehow destroyed all American facilities on the ground. As such, the observational plane held four thermonuclear bombs.

Chrome Dome flights led to numerous "Broken Arrow" accidents involving the loss of nuclear weapons. Seven years earlier, a B-52 holding a pair of 3.8 megaton bombs broke up over Goldsboro, North Carolina - two months later, a similar accident occurred near Yuba City, California. Then in 1964 in Maryland, then in 1966 in Palomares, Spain.

And, finally, in 1968 over Greenland. A fire led to the bomber being abandoned, impacting sea ice in North Star Bay, and the conventional explosives inside all four of its bombs detonating. Components were spread in a 3-square-mile strip from the impact site.

All four plutonium fission primaries were recovered. Three of the four uranium fusion secondaries were recovered. The fourth was never found.

|| -- ||

 

The Cold War was a blessing for research into eigenweaponry, especially where it could be intersected with nuclear physics or rocketry (see the Soviet ballistic missile engine 15D760 "Wax Seal"). CIA curses, non-interactive munitions, nature-spirit warheads, and so on.

The lost component was a fusion secondary - but it was salted with the components of a sentient curse-complex. The detonation of the bomb would spread these microscopic components over hundreds of miles, creating a 65537-grammic "circle" on an unforeseen scale. The effect of this circle is assumed to be true-name-targeted apoptosis.

The secondary has been seen. Moving. We suspect its true-name encoding to have worn, widening the targets of the curse-complex. We suspect the curse-complex to be hunting these new targets. The fusion secondary is unable to detonate without the presence of a fission primary. We suspect the fusion secondary to be hunting a fission primary.

Lanthanide Horizon Vignetteposting

In the style of Knot//Braid//Line - a war, a harvest, a crash, a christening, a telegram, and a fable.

-*-*-*-*-

On the first day of the first year of his travels, the wanderer Ozgur carried a walking stick, three weeks of dried, salted vegetables, a block of graphite wrapped in copper wire to cook with, a map on sedge paper, a hat, a second hat in case of emergency, and a ridged meditation charm to rub between thumb and forefinger, to feel the heartbeat of the sleepers he is leaving.

-*-*-*-*-

The workers have just finished the telegraph line to the forward operations tent of Ratan, head of a two-hundred man operation to map the Lacework Tunnel.

It would be better if they hadn't.

FROM THE OFFICE OF HEDRARCH PURNAMA STOP

YOUR LETTERS OF EXPEDITION ARE REVOKED STOP

YOU HAVE LOST TWO MAGNESIUM CHARGES FIVE SCAVENGERS AND TWO OF MY SWORN WHO HAVE FED FROM THE WINE OF MY BLOOD STOP

BY THE MEASUREMENT OF THE SURVEYORS YOUR EXPEDITION HAS TRAVELED ONLY HALF OF AN OBJECTIVE MILE STOP

BY THE MEASUREMENT OF THE EXPEDITION YOU HAVE TRAVELED FOUR HUNDRED STOP

YOU HAVE FOUND NOTHING STOP

THERE IS NO GENERATOR NO PROCESSING CENTER NO TOWN OF FIRSTBORN TO BE BROUGHT TO HEEL STOP

YOUR ATTEMPTS TO GATHER MY FAVOR ARE NOTICED STOP

-*-*-*-*-

On the first day of the sixth year of his travels, the wanderer Ozgur saw one of those few, fabled immortals. She knelt, holding up the weight of the ceiling - and across her arms were dozens of chains in the shape of letters.

Ozgur took one in his hand to read - "You are the wanderer Ozgur. I have seen your face in the eyes of the world. There is a great hall, plated in silver. You will find nothing there."

The immortal looked down at him, and let one of her hands drop from the roof above. Ozgur climbed up through the ceiling, into a great hall, plated in silver.

-*-*-*-*-

Argider Maitagarri of 4 watches the harvest come in. The tower overflows with grey fruits, the sea overflows with fish. His sister drowned, six months before - but he found the fish she became, and now it hangs above the door of his room in the tower Maitagarri. A seventh name is all but guaranteed to him.

-*-*-*-*-

On the tenth day of the ninth year of his travels, the wanderer Ozgur met the immortal again. The ceiling still pressed down upon her, and still she was silent. The wanderer reached into her chains, peered into the tangle, and read - "I remember you."

The immortal looked down at him, and let one of her hands drop from the roof above. Ozgur climbed up through the ceiling, into a great hall, plated with silver. He saw his own footprints in the dust. And then he started on the long path home.

                                                                            -*-*-*-*-

The city Drinking Water sat above the city of Wheat Fields. Through the hole in the ceiling, Drinking Water sent its aqueducts and extracted its tribute. One day, the patron of Wheat Fields climbed up the fifty thousand stairs between the two, attended by her guards and guarded by her attendants. 

She spoke to the patron of Drinking Water for two weeks and three days (a lucky number for her temperament), and changed nothing.

When the tall men from outside came to Wheat Fields, they offered her weapons - guns, and bombs, and machines powered by burning the blood of the walls. 

The patron of Wheat Fields was killed soon after, as Drinking Water dropped stones and burning oils and killing cables from their aqueducts. That same day, the patron of Drinking Water was shot dead in the street.

A month later, the tall men from outside called the cities new names.

                                                                            -*-*-*-*-

The good ship Certifier is setting sail. The hydrogen tanks are filled, the shipwright has said his two blessings (traditionally, "Come home safe" and "Come home joyous", though this time he fumbled and said "cheerful"), a relic (three bolts from the Together, ship of the heroic Selectwoman Dyann) has been set into the hold, and the voyage's Selectman, Leander, has been mocked vigorously.

A man on the docks releases the clamp, and the Certifier drifts out, spotlights on the world below.

                                                                            -*-*-*-*-

A city stumbles. One foot cracks through the floor and lands in a pool of water - a second is overstressed, and its knee joint cracks. The people awake to a hammering alarm, but the city has already sent a team for the repair, and a second team to prepare to decontaminate the first.

They light cones of wax around their homes anyway. You can never be too careful.

The first team welds the cracked joint - it will not last, but it will hold for now. Then they spot for the city as it carefully lifts the first leg, and spit in the hole to punish it. When they return they are coated in grainy paste and kept in a room full of burning incense, talking the whole time - hoping any words they caught will make themselves known.

                                                                            -*-*-*-*-

On the hundredth day of the eleventh year of his travels, the wanderer Ozgur returned home. His walking stick had snapped, his vegetables were long eaten, his graphite block was gone, traded to a Navigator for a gun, the gun was lost in a tunnel underneath a electrical substation, the map was drenched in greasy water on an open plain, the hat got caught on a spike, and the emergency hat blew away at the top of the tallest pillar he had ever seen.

But he still held the charm between his forefinger and thumb, and felt the ridge and the hole. One-two, one-two, one-two.

atrocious slushposting

Why write posts that require effort and thought when you can propel your blog forwards on purely play reports and miscellaneous information soup? 

Half of this is stuff lost in Discord posts, the rest dredged up from my drafts. Perhaps some of it will be Completed, someday.

but probably not

Thanatonauts and Their Designs For The World Of Humankind

Thanatonauts, those able to drag a piece of themselves into the lands of the Dead and back, have brought back daguerreotype images, anatomical sketches, and even interviews with the denizens of that blasted waste. Some take these odysseys (which, even with modern diving equipment, are still certainly not safe) just in the interest of scholarship, but a few hold more intense plans: "extractor" groups hope to find both a way to bring objects of the Dead back to Earth, and to find something in that land worth taking for the profit of themselves the world of the living, while "weaver" ideologues in thanatonaut leadership hope to open its gates to all - closing off the possibility of a heavenly afterlife for the certainty of the grey fields.

(an attempt to mess with that old fantasy standby, the evil necromancer cult - the 1800s tech level emerges from nowhere and returns to it)

BITTER WIND SIGNS [C-E 🟥]

The Organization is at its most dense in Washington D.C., unsurprisingly. There's a good dozen fireteams based in the city - proximity to headquarters sure reinforces that.

Last week, one team turned up dead - local police found a set of seemingly unrelated murders. Another team died earlier today. We've ordered the rest to go to ground, and we're providing you a list - safehouses, identities, crime scene documentation, all of it. Keep the rest of our fireteams alive, figure out what's killing them, and handle it.

This mission is CLOSED-EYE not only because of the need to avoid civilian notice, but because of the need to avoid opposition notice.

(what's happening to them? maybe a peer competitor has gotten hold of Organization documents and is going hunting. Maybe a fireteam has turned traitor, using their pre-existing relationships to stab the Organization in the back. Or, maybe one of the deceased brought something back from their last op...)

OMICRON VEGA RECIEVING [O-E 🟩]

A small town's been impacted by a large earthquake - the first earthquake in living memory, and the largest one to ever hit. Photogrammetry shows a chasm's opened on one end of town, and civilian calls to emergency services have reported something moving in there.

You're half disaster response, half caving expedition. Put out some fires, dig some people out of buildings, and deal with whatever's in that hole.

(big worms, i bet. seems like the kind of thing they'd do)

1dsome Modern Fantasy Weapons

1. production of Cartridge, Caliber 5.56 mm, Infernal, XM653 [No primer, Black-anodized case and bullet] ended in 2012 due to a lack of necessary specialist materials. Remaining ammunition is known to provide improved penetration (ignores the effects of armor on AC or DR, can pierce car doors, windshields, home walls, etc), incendiary capability (+1d4 fire damage, can set things on fire), and unexpected reactions with human physiology (human or metahuman targets killed with these cartridges exude a cloud of caustic black smoke which both cannot be seen through and deals 1 damage per round to everyone within, and also cannot be revived by any means).

2. Infolded Ballistic Armor, the first military use of infolding, where an object is placed in the same space as another object in three dimensions, but shifted in the fourth, showed promise, reaching NIJ level IV while remaining concealable, light, and flexible in 3d. However, as was later found in industrial application of infolding, the process decays over time without repeated exposure to the Chasm. Since that land was acquired by Romanian chemical company Sinteza, it is no longer available to outside powers. All known examples of infolded ballistic armor released their components into 3D as of April 2nd, 2019. 

3. PG-7DS is the designation for a set of 40mm projectiles for the ubiquitous RPG-7 meant to improve its effectiveness against modern tank armor. Instead of a standard shaped charge, it contains a bound nature spirit. On contact with a target, the spirit is crushed, and as it dies it releases a flood of vines, stems, and flowers. Successful shots will cause this effect to spread into the tank, disabling sensitive components, starting fires, and injuring or killing the crew by piercing them with these plants.

These were abandoned due to moral radiation - as the bound spirits started to comprehend their confinement, proximity to them began to have deleterious emotional effects.

4. Unerring Stones, carved with weak glyphs (feather-type, class I) are common discoveries in conflict-prone areas from the Mesolithic to the present. These glyphs improve the accuracy and range of the thrown stone, and are easily replicated. While the glyphs have been used on other thrown items (bottles, hand grenades, etc.), stones are the most enduring of them, and thus the most often identified.

Of course, even since the invention of the bow these devices have been a weapon of last resort. Against a modern military, or even a gunman, their effect is negligible, and the standard glyph is too large to replicate on arrowheads or bullets.

+2 to-hit, 1 damage, range of 100 feet

5. The recently-rediscovered alchemical technique To Create a Killing Fire to Purge The Holy and Their Subjects has been declared illegal under the UN's Chemical Weapons Convention. Independent reporting alleges it still sees use by the U.S. military for defoliation and smoke generation.

The Astrologer

A GLOG class doomed to incompletion, and that honestly may not be very pleasant to play anyway

A: Invocation

B: ?

C: Alteration

D: Configuration

Invocation

Each morning, roll 5 dice of these types (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12). Each of these dice represents a celestial object, and their results present you with their Aspect for the day.

Once each day, you can Invoke the Aspects you have rolled, causing them to take effect.

d4 - The Peasant (Work, People)

1. Something lost will be found. Invoke this Aspect to learn the location of an object.

2. The people's hearts will be turned. Invoke this Aspect to automatically receive a Friendly result on a Reaction Roll with a group of low-ranking people (peasants, militiamen, etc.).

3. A moment of weakness will consume someone. Invoke this Aspect to make someone stop paying attention through a coincidence (dozing off, important message, etc.)

4. etc

d6 - The Tree (Nature, Survival)

1. Death will be averted by chance. Invoke this Aspect to allow a character to reroll a failed Save.

2. A path will be cleared for you. Invoke this Aspect to move twice as fast for one round as plants, stray rocks, and other obstructions clear themselves.

3. You will find a bounteous harvest. Invoke this Aspect when foraging to automatically gather the highest number of rations.

4. A grievous wound will be prevented. Invoke this Aspect to prevent a roll on the Death and Dismemberment table.

5. Nature revolts. Invoke this Aspect to halve someone's movement speed for one round as obstacles move in front of them.

6.

d8  - The Red Lion (War, Beasts)

1. A death, cruel and violent. Invoke this Aspect to add 1d4 to the damage of one attack.

2. A hidden enemy is revealed. Invoke this Aspect to bring an invisible or hidden creature into view.

3. A beast is tamed. Invoke this Aspect to automatically receive a Friendly result on a Reaction Roll with an animal.

4. Fear strikes into the hearts of men. Invoke this Aspect to force a group of NPCs to make a morale check.

5.

6.

7.

8.

d10 - The Magister (Knowledge, Magic)

1. Truth will be pulled from secrets. Invoke this Aspect to learn the use of a magic object.

2. A voice will be silenced. Invoke this Aspect to prevent the use of a magic spell or item.

3. Arcane effects will shake the earth. Invoke this Aspect to

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

d12 - The Emperor (Authority, Heroism)

Alteration
Once per day, you can choose to reroll the entire set of dice as the stars reveal new Aspects to you. You must take the rerolled set.

Configuration
Once per day, you can choose the results of one of your dice.

The Eyes of Dame Guendolen

The ranks of Knight-Exorcists maintain their frail connections to our world through their eyes. Under the sign of the Opened Eye they are focused here, on the material. Under the Third Eye they balance, barely, as their armor begins to weigh on them and threats of both here and Elsewhere loom. Under the Closed Eye they are pulled away, becoming incorporeal for a time to delve fully into the lands of the spirits.

(a knight-exorcist glog class has sat in my drafts for 4 actual human years, and i'm ready to admit it'll never be finished)

A Facebook Post

Something crawled up out of my basement and stole a bag of flour? My cat really didn't like it, but it didn't really do anything. Is there, like, a spray I can buy or something to get rid of it? I found a tunnel it dug through my basement, but I don't want to go through the effort of moving all my cardboard boxes. 

thanks, bye

Aboard the Worldship

Legal disputes between Skinborne vessels are related to the ship, rather than the crew - by the time you see them next, it's certainly possible for the crew to have changed, and almost certain for them to have elected a new Select(wo/man) to represent them shoreside.

Among the clans that make their homes in the marshy Coolant Seas (as opposed to the Walker-Herds, who migrate between them), extra names are gifted on the night of the "new year" as a reward for valor or hard work. They are rarely referenced, though the number may be used in introductions (I am Benat [personal name] Itsasargi [Home of origin] of 6 [number of honorifics]).

Art in the hivemind Sustainer Cells uses hierarchical perspective - priests, the honorable sleepers, and such are presented as physically larger than others, whether in painting or in theater. Satirical works invert this (keeping members of high positions still recognizable by their dress and facepaint) or exaggerate it (a single hand the size of a person reaching down from offstage in a play).

(Sunless Horizon hasn't been posted about much since late 2020, but it remains my favorite of my settings. Almost everything in it needs to be renamed, but that can come later)

The Clockwork Neuroblock

A ticking water-cooled superintelligence buried deep under the earth, commanded in ancient times to build the perfect organism. After creating thousands of lineages of horrors, the Neuroblock has finally succeeded - down in the depths writhe nests of immortal, indestructible Proteans, living forever on nothing but trickles of water and cave moss.

(3 of the 4 floors of this dungeon are done, but it hasn't been touched since a couple days of manic effort last year. Orbiters Local 519 kind of messed me up)

The Dead Language

♑︎-♊︎-♃ "an animal with think", a person

♉︎-♍︎-♒︎ "road that doesn't move", a town - notably, can also be read as "water that doesn't move", a lake or sea

⚴-♉︎-♍︎-♒︎ "one part of a road that doesn't move", a building

⚴-♉︎-♍︎-♒︎-♊︎-♑︎-♊︎-♃-♊︎-♅ "one part of a road that doesn't move with animal-with-think-with-important", a palace

♃-♊︎-⚳-♆ "think about food and light" - to be happy

(i hesitate to call it "a conlang", since it uses roughly 20 symbols and has little in the way of grammar. it is a way for me to pass the time, and someday use for megadungeon puzzles)

G20(ish), Rendered in the Dead Language 

☊-⚶-☊ ♊︎ ♋︎-♊︎-⚴ ♅-♋︎\ ♍︎-⚼/♌︎/♍︎-☊/♃-♉︎-♏︎/♃-☉/♏︎-♅ | ♅-♋︎-♅ ♊︎ ♅-♋︎ ⚶-⚶ ⛎︎/⚶-⛎︎/♍︎ ♉︎-♋︎

⚹ ♉︎-♌︎/♍︎ ⚼-♊︎-♋︎-♊︎-♋︎-♋︎-♋︎/♊︎ ♅-♋︎-♅ | ♅-♋︎ ♅ ♋︎-♊︎-♋︎

☊-⚶-☊ ♊︎ ⚼-♊︎-⛎︎-♊︎-⛎︎ ♌︎-♋︎ | ⛎︎ ♉︎-♌︎ ☊-⚶-☊/♍︎ ♉︎-♌︎ ⚼/⚶ ♉︎-♌︎ ⚼ ♋︎ ♊︎ ♌︎-♋︎

⚹ ♌︎-♋︎ ♊︎ ♉︎-♋︎/☊-⚶-☊ ♉︎-♑︎

you-away-from-you has five-and-one important-numbers: move-stone, safe, move-you, know-things-written-down, know-things-near-you, speak-importantly. important-number-importants have/are important number away-from-away-from three, away-from three, move to five-minus-five

in the future, unsafe, move rock-with-five-and-five-five-five, add important-number-important. Number greater than five-and-five

you-away-from you has rock-with-three-and-three safe-numbers. they unsafe you-away-from-you, move the unsafe rock, subtract the unsafe rock number from safe-numbers

in the future, safe-number with many-less-than-many, you-away-from-you not animal

(i don't even have an excuse for this - coming back six months later i barely know what i was on about)

sunless horizon rambling

i n t r o d u c t i o n

I am very lazy. Instead of writing something with actual substance, here's both a pile of pictures, and some vague rambling about video games.

first bit - the pictures

the Houses have been bringing derelict mechs back into service, preparing for war with the Oasis Kingdoms

much of Ein Soph has decayed, becoming a wellspring of new life

some has not.

second bit - the rambling

zoop woop veyedio gaems

I steal all sorts of concepts and ideas from video games for Sunless, simply because it's all easier to reach. I can go "hm yes, maybe this game has good ideas", and then just play it for ~30 minutes, and see the good ideas! (yay)

So here are some veyedio gaems that I am mercilessly deconstructing and scavenging. Also, hey, maybe some of them look like fun.

Reciever - Fairness in Hyper-Lethal Environments

Reciever is the fastest, most utterly ridiculously lethal game I've ever played. You play as a person(?) wandering through an infinite purgatory of fancy apartments, hunting for audio tapes and fighting drones and turrets.

It would be incredibly boring if it didn't hate you so much. You can't just reload your gun, you need to mash 8 buttons in the correct order to go through the process of firearm operation step by step. 

Fights with the drones aren't even really fights in the traditional sense - either you see the drone first and knock it down with a single well-placed shot, or it sees you first and you frantically dump your entire magazine into it while screaming, then die.

look into the eyes of death

Despite this, it has one thin barrier between you and not-being-you-anymore - every enemy forgot to turn their headlights off, and they're so powerful the light glitches through walls. 

It's nearly impossible to be surprised - even if you don't notice the huge blue light (which is also the only blue thing in the game), the little *beep* they make a second before they attack will be burned into your mind.

This gives some good advice for the equally lethal combat found in Sunless Horizon (and the majority of other OSR games) - warn the players about monsters. For example, no one in Sunless Horizon has darkvision except the Disciples, so any group of wanderers would be bringing light. While Disciples are harder to see, they're easy to hear, thanks to their constant static-filled chanting.

NaissanceE - Inhuman Architecture

NaissanceE is a platformer(?)/walking simulator... thing, where you walk through a seemingly infinite purgatory of machinery and stark colors. Are you starting to see a theme?

The game is incredible at making you feel like you don't belong - the lights shift instantly from pitch-black to blindingly bright, you spend 5 minutes crawling through a tunnel barely taller than you are only to emerge in front of a mile-long chasm, electricity arcing across it in massive bolts. Nothing here it built for you. You should not be here. You do not fit into it's world.

A lot of what's been written about Sunless Horizon is very "woog darkness claustrophobia argh", but that's something I'm trying to move away from, into a less predictable framework.

You should absolutely watch this video, which explains the game better than it could ever be described in text.

Pathologic - Just Utterly Ruining Your Player's Lives
H E Y - this has spoilers for Pathologic, so if you don't want that, go away ok cool

Pathologic is a Russian survival horror game where you work to cure a plague in a rural steppe town. Pathologic is incredibly unpleasant to play - the vast majority of your time is spent slowly trudging through town over and over, the combat is odd, slippery, and terrible, and the game has a slight habit of not actually telling you how to play it.

However, it's very interestingly cruel - for example, on your second day in town, all prices increase tenfold without warning, dragging you down from a place of "I can easily afford stuff, I thought this game was hard!" to "Maybe I should sell my only weapon so I can buy food and survive another day."

It's incredibly unstable - things just change (always for the worse), with no warning, and you just have to deal with it. You can never be prepared for what happens next, it's all awful forever.

This is surprisingly easy to accomplish - a few timetables similar to those found within A Pound of Flesh can set up a framework for multiple types of events, from war between the Navigator Houses to the Disciples' Last Crusade. This idea's also useful in any game - have tables for the living Moon coming to kill everyone, the invasion of the Icthyan Empire from beneath the sea, or the rise of Hell and upending of all of the cosmos.