Tumble Melon Tree

Goblin Punch, explores the intriguing concept of Pseudo-Imaginary Dinosaurs. With the power to appear to some while remaining nonexistent to others, these creatures blur the boundaries of perception and challenge the very fabric of our understanding.

Pseudo-Imaginary Dinosaur (all types)

Number Appearing: 1
Alignment: Neutral
Movement: 90'
Armor Class: 4 [15]
Hit Dice: 6
Attacks: 1 chomp or whomp or spike (as appropriate)
Damage: 3d6
Save: 12+
Morale: 10
Treasure: Imaginary dragonhide, imaginary gems
Special: Halfway Real
XP: 600

Psuedo-Imaginary Dinosaurs are the servants of Tyroganon Ferox, the Paradox Lord of the Infinite Boneyard. No other creature would (or could) serve the lord of temporal paradoxes.

These creatures are halfway real. When a psuedo-imaginary dinosaur appears, everyone who sees it must make a save vs magic. Characters who make their save realize that the dinosaur has no mass or energy and cannot harm them, and the dinosaur becomes nonexistent (as far as they are concerned). Characters who fail their save realize that the dinosaur is thinking, hateful creature, and the dinosaur is real (as far as they are concerned).

Combat only gets interesting if some people make their save while others fail it. Players who have ignored the dinosaur cannot affect it or interact with it in any way, and vice versa. On the other hand, players who failed their save may be crushed, knocked about, or even picked up and swallowed by. To their more willful companions, they appear to be flying through the air and leaking blood for no reason.

Technically, the dinosaur is reflecting itself off the mind of its victim. The people who failed their saves have a small part of their minds hijacked, and it is this part of their mind that is actually performing telekinesis in imitation of a dinosaur that isn't real (in the strictest sense of the word).

Bottom-line: if you kill or knock unconscious the people who are imagining the dinosaur eating them, the dinosaur will dissipate. The dinosaur will try to prevent this, of course.

The halflings of the psychogenic jungles know this. A fortress with no one in it will never be molested by imaginary dinosaurs, but if one halfling passes through, catches sight of one of Tyroganon's servants and believes in it, the entire fortress can be destroyed.

Consequently, many of the halflings are experienced in the use of the lead button, which is a heavy button sewn on the inside wrist of their jackets. Halflings who see and believe in dinosaurs know to quickly knock themselves unconscious with it before the dinosaur can tear them apart.

The dinosaurs come in all shapes and colors that you can imagine, literally. And sure--they sometimes incorporate elements of what you are thinking about, your greatest fears, whatever. Don't think about titties when you see one. They are intelligent enough to follow a 'believer' back to a larger group where they can get more people to believe in them.

If someone is still riding a dinosaur when it dies (disappears) they also disappear, because their being in that position was dependent on the dinosaur. Their circumstance (being 8' off the ground) depending on something that was semi-imaginary, and so they inherited that semi-imaginariness. People who disappear in this way must succeed on a save to reappear in 1d6 rounds. If they fail, they are gone forever.

Psuedo-Imaginary Dinosaur

Looking to add some complexity and excitement to your RPG combat? Check out this article on different types of initiative systems by Goblin Punch. From persistent initiative that speeds up play to turn-by-turn initiative that injects randomness, this piece explores the pros and cons of each approach. Plus, learn about the fascinating world of initiative modifiers and the debate between group, individual, and no initiative systems. Get ready to take your tabletop battles to the next level!

This is for my own record as much as it is for anyone else's.  Instead of listing different types of initiative, I'll just ramble about different types of "toggles".

Persistant Initiative vs Turn-by-Turn Initiative

Persistant Initiative results in faster play, but it takes randomness out of combat since everyone only rolls once for initiative.  It also gives more of an advantage to the rules-minded players who may choose to delay their actions.  Enough delayed actions usually result with the PCs acting in a "clump"

Turn-by-Turn Initiative is slower, but prevents metagame lawyering.  It ensures a constant injection of randomness every turn, and adds a lot of swinginess, since the dragon might get two turns in a row and pulp someone.

Initiative Modifiers

Using initiative modifiers adds a layer of complexity without necessarily removing the randomness.  Whether it is based on dex or actions or whatever, it would appeal to players who want to see their character sheets having more of an effect on the in-game world.

Initiative modifiers based on action (or weapon, ugh) might serve as a way of balancing really slow weapons with faster ones, or as a way to make it more likely that spellcasters go last.  (But see the last paragraph below.)

Group Initiative vs Individual Initiative vs No Initiative

Group initiative is more streamlined.  It is more swingy, since it isn't based on anyone's stats and if one side may get two turns in a row (if you are doing turn-by-turn initiative).

Individual initiative is takes longer at the table.  It might appeal to those who desire more simulation--who want quicker characters to act first.  I suppose it is fairer, since one side rarely gets a huge advantage over the other because of an initiative roll.  It makes the players a little less active, since they aren't discussing what order they want to act in; the DM is telling them when it is their turn.

No initiative is when turns go in a Ranged-Movement-Melee-Spell turn order (or some other alternative).  These have the advantage of being fair and balanced, but take a lot of the randomness out of a combat.  I think a large degree of randomness is a good thing to have in combat.  It keeps it chaotic.  And chaos ensures that the more powerful side (usually the PCs) still run a lot of risk.  This also may serve as a nerf to spellcasting, since spellcasting (usually) always goes last and therefor has a greater chance to be disrupted.

Initiative Rolls


Goblin Punch explores the world of hagulas, or "haggers" - humanoid fish creatures with sinuous bodies and razor-sharp teeth. From their amphibious nature to their bizarre mating habits, Goblin Punch takes us on a journey to discover the secrets of these creatures lurking in America's submerged cities. 

Hagulas, more commonly called “haggers”, are humanoid fish (a proprietary blend of lamprey, catfish, and hagfish).  They are more formally called myere, which means “honorable egg”.  If you want to insult one, call him a churlfish.  They stand between 5’ to 7’ tall and have sinuous, slimy bodies.  Their movements are lightning quick and their skin is like wet rubber coated with fine grit.  They smell like dirt, metal, and water.  Their broad faces are mostly just a mouth ringed by four barbels (like a catfish).  Their beady black eyes are tucked in behind this, along the sides of their head.  They cannot see straight ahead, and so turn their heads sideways when they want to look at you.  They are fully amphibious and take great pride in their paddle-like tails.

                Once a male hagger reaches maturity, he becomes able to breathe air, and they can only get nourishment by drinking blood through their teeth, which cluster in rows like stubby hypodermic needles.  These physiological occur in order to their bodies for fusion with a female.   Males attach themselves to the females by fusing their jaws into the female’s body, and eventually sharing a bloodstream as the males atrophy into little more than gonads with faces, that provide the much huger female with the sperm she needs to lay more eggs.  Females are huge things with the size and habits of orca whales.  They are also beautifully intelligent, eloquent, and usually ravenous. While the females hunt along the shores, they are capable of lurching around on land if they are very hungry.  They are most comfortable at the bottom of ocean trenches, where they have their secret places.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of males decide being their mate’s gonad isn’t the life they want.  These ‘bachelor’ males are numerous, and you can find them around the shores and ruins of America’s newly submerged cities.  They run clinics by the shoreline, where body alterations are provided.  They salvage and sell scrap from our sunken cities.  They manage huge manatee farms, where they harvest most of the blood that sustains them.  Some of them go to sea, and live for years attached to a whale like a remora, sucking blood all day long in a lifestyle reminiscent of their homeworld.  Some poor ones become beggars, and sit outside of stores begging for blood from humans.  Just a drop, mister. . .

They are quick witted, secretive, and rarely take charge.  They are sluggish unless they are very motivated, usually by someone yelling at them.  They are fond of irony, sarcasm, and reversals.  Most of them don’t handle disappointment very well, and are prone to throw tantrums or disown their friends, depending on the type of disappointment. Oftentimes, they will say something only to say the exact opposite a few seconds later. . . not!  Alcohol and chocolate are deadly poisons to them, and they are known for their persistent expressions of gratitude, which are often in poor taste.  Smiling is not reflexive for them, but they do it frequently just to freak people out with their rows of teeth.  the “lips” they talk with are behind these teeth, so their voices always seem to be coming out out from their throats.

                Haggers are masters of biology.  Flesh is putty in their hands, and they have even found a way to reverse aging (though it only works on haggers). They run clinics around the world that are capable of healing any injury, redesigning creatures to be more awesome, and even bringing people back from the dead.  All they need is your brain to resurrect you, and if the brain is fresh enough, you even get to keep 50%, 60%, or maybe even 70% of your memories!  Of course, all of their procedures carry a certain risk of mutation.  That’s tough to shake.  But think what a great conversation starter you will have with a line of fingers growing out of your spine!  Aside from resurrection, you can also pay the haggers to reroll your HP dice. 

Be all that you can be!

+1 Dex, -1 Str
Dietary Restriction: Blood
Haggers provide their services to you at 25% of the cost.  This is partially due to the fact that the processes are simpler when performed on haggers.  Additionally, haggers can have themselves youthened in their clinics, something no other race can enjoy.
1/day, you can produce a thick yellow paste from your gills.  If this paste is mixed with water, it can turn into about 30 gallons of slime.  Thick, slippery, choking slime that is a mild hallucinogen to humans that eat it.  You can also use this to get +4 on an attempt to escape from a grapple or a bite or whatever.
You can breathe water, and you have a swim speed of 30’.  You are more comfortable in the water.  
If you take no precautions, you dry out in 30 minutes on land.  You'll be dead an hour after that if nothing prevents your drying.  Most haggers solve this problem by wearing wet layers of clothing or coating themselves in grease (which must be constantly reapplied).  Or they just keep a bathtub handy.

Hagula

Goblin Punch takes you on a wild ride through three intriguing settings: Centerra, Duscuro, and Noxious America. From grimy fantasy landscapes to a world infested with gods and aliens, and a twisted 1930's America where Lovecraft meets noir, this blog is a collection of the author's thoughts on Dungeons and Dragons, engineering, art, fiction, and more. Get ready to dive into a realm of cliche-punting, transformation, and decaying worlds as Goblin Punch invites you to explore this captivating blend of imagination and creativity.

What is this blog about?  I'm not too sure about that myself.  I play a lot of DnD, and I think about a lot of DnD.  So, one reason to have this blog is to have a place to put my thoughts in order.  Another reason is to share with the internet-people.

I have three settings.

Centerra



Duscuro



Noxious America

We're pretty sure it's Satan's corpse, anyway.  That's just what everyone calls it.

It's the least developed of all my settings, and also the one I'm most into right now.

Other Things might also appear on this blog, including but not limited to: engineering, architecture, art, fiction, and stupid things that North Korea does.
is the stereotypical fantasy setting.  All the unicorns are rotting abominations, the richest person on the planet is a dragon merchant, and psychic dragons control the dreamscape from a vast subterranean ocean.  Some of the highest level things around are orcs.  You can climb to the moon by climbing its dangling tail.  Most of the world is monotheistic, and worships Iasu, the blue-winged angel.  The calendar starts in the Time of Fire and Madness, wheneverything was on fire and everyone was insane.  Pretty standard fare. Magic is rare, there are no apparent gods, no teleports, resurrection, or even undead in the normal sense.  I'd call it gritty fantasy if there wasn't so much weird shit in it.  Themes are cliche-punting, transformation, subtle post-apocalypse, evil humanity, sex, and decay.  I also try to keep it "hard fantasy", where everything is internally consistent and makes strict sense given the laws of the world.  Which makes it hard to fit all of thegonzo shit in, but that's why I have other settings. is infested with gods and flirting with aliens.  Formerly a "nature reserve" established by vast and ancient (but still mostly human) powers, the planet was guaranteed to remain in a natural, uncivilized state because 1) the humans were engineered to be idiots, 2) dragons were engineered to wreck everyone's shit as soon as people started stacking bricks, and 3) there's a set of immortal fleshbrain death satellites ringing the world that will drop lasery sky-deathas soon as there is any deviation from the accepted norm.  All of these failsafes failed spectacularly very quickly, and part of the campaign consists of figuring out why. Gods are tangible, accessible rulers, who speak through wooden manikins.  They rule city-states like kings, not some distant ethos.  One of them, the god of warfare and agriculture, exists on the material plane like any other schmuck in order to better enjoy the things he loves.  The gods wage wars against each other in order to stamp out the loser's religion and absorb their portfolios.  All of this takes place under a pair of binary suns that causefour-year winters when the colder sun revolves in front of the warm sun.  This is bad, because there are tribes of things in the mountains--half of them are undead, half of them are alive, but you'd need a doctor to tell the difference--who get all Genghis Khan when it gets cold, and start trampling cities under their ultra-mammoths made from normal mammoth corpses. is 1930's America forty years after the fall of humanity due to sudden, cataclysmic immigration of "gods" from tentacled dimensions  It's a mix of Lovecraft and maybe even pokemon and noir. And definitely a lot of Americana.  But it's not post-apocalyptic.  Humanity has fallen, but other things have risen in their place.  It's a time of optimism, dance halls, gangsters, speakeasies, gnashing death, droning abysms of madness, and writhing degeneration in dark corners.  From Satan'sgigantic, poisonous corpse in Arizona to Skethriman Scolex's combustible corpulence hovering over Fatland.  It's last call for the human race, before the doors lock behind us and we face the night.

What's That Noise

Goblin Punch presents a captivating and unpredictable "Random Weather Table," taking mundane weather to bizarre extremes. From acid rain to drunken fog, this peculiar forecast offers a 5% chance of encountering truly extraordinary phenomena. Discover the psychedelic hallucinatory skies, blackness devoid of any light, and clouds raining blasphemous secrets. Unusual weather doesn't catch you off guard, providing a brief warning for the strange events that will unfold. With each oddity lasting for a few hours, this whimsical adventure is sure to pique your curiosity and keep you on your toes. Get ready for a wild ride through an unpredictable weather system!

Mundane Weather (95% of the time)


SUNNY WEATHER
RAINY WEATHER
1-3
Still
Overcast
4-6
Breezy
Light Rain
7
Gusty
Heavy Rain
8
Windy
Thunderstorm

If the weather was sunny yesterday, it has an 80% chance to be sunny today.
If the weather was rainy yesterday, it has a 50% chance to be sunny today.
If it's cold outside, the rain is snow.
If it's dry outside, there is no rain and treat Heavy Rain and Thunderstorm as Duststorm.

Weird Weather (5% of the time)

1
Acid Rain
16
Stone Rain
2
Painted Rain
17
Reverse Stone Rain
3
Noxious Rain
18
Rain of Horror
4
Reverse Rain
19
Rain of Worms
5
Hallucinatory Sky
20
Rain of Slimes
6
Blackness
21
Rain of Meat
7
Insanity Sun
22
Rain of Knives
8
Sun Invasion
23
Rain of Vermin
9
Distant Space
24
Rain of Gasoline
10
Thick Air
25
Rain of Soot
11
Antigravity
26
Rain of Noise
12
Low Gravity
27
Rain of Rage
13
Empty Wind
28
Blasphemous Clouds
14
Hungry Fog
29
Burning Clouds
15
Drunken Fog
30
Roll 2x


All weird weather is preceded by something indicative.  Strange looking clouds, “squirming” in the sky (or behind it), chaotic droning from the sky, etc.  Weird weather doesn’t come as a surprise, and you usually get 1d4 hours warning.  It lasts for 1d6 hours, unless indicated otherwise.

Acid Rain corrodes metal, wears down stone, ruins cloth, kills fish, and does 1d6 damage per minute if you are caught in it.  More damage afterwards, too, if you don’t get that stuff off your clothing and skin. 

Antigravity pillars roam over the land like searchlights from mars (which they might be).  Things caught in the beams fall upwards for 3d20 seconds before falling back down.  Cars are dropped on buildings.  Schoolchildren pepper their playground like a dozen dropped eggs.  Smart folks hang out in their basement and tie themselves to the floor.

Blackness.  No sun.  No moon.  No stars.  It’s as dark as being in a cave.  Up above, you can hear slow sliding noises, like someone is sandpapering a square mile of elephant skin.  And there are things reaching down, extinguishing the bonfires and the lights, clustered so tightly in the sky that no light gets through.

Blasphemous Clouds!  Deformed, inhuman faces appear in the clouds and rain down booming indictments, blasphemies, and profanities.  20% chance they tell embarassing/horrific secrets from one of the PCs past.  20% chance they tell horrible lies about one of the PCs.  Wasps fly down and sting people who talk back to the clouds.  The clouds say whatever will disturb people the most: dead baby jokes, mockeries of god, homoerotic poetry. . . whatever will make the most children cry.

Burning Clouds!  The clouds turn red, roiling masses of angry cinders.  20% chance it rains fire.  20% chance it rolls along the ground like asshole fog.

Distant Space.  Oh wow.  For 1d6 hours, it looks like the Earth has been teleported to some distant part of the universe.  5% chance bathed in the warmth of another sun, 95% chance the temperature drops 10 degrees F per hour.  Independent 10% chance of deadly meteor shower.

Drunken Fog!  This fog is way more fun than the hungry fog!  Everyone it touches gets wicked drunk!  Chance for alcohol poisoning is low, but don’t drive a car.  The police try to pull people over but they drive into ditches.  Sometimes bad stuff attacks, ‘cuz it knows that everyone sucks at fighting back.

Empty Wind!  If this wind blows on a living creature, it will be transported into the future!  D6: 1-2 is 1d6 rounds / 3-4 is 1d6 hours / 5 is 1d20 days / 6 is 1d6 months.  There is a 10% chance that this wind will be ethereal, and will blow through walls, affecting everyone.  Transported creatures arrive naked, covered in sunburns, and smelling like campfire.

Hallucinatory Skies are completely harmless, but they are freaky.  D6: 1 - fleshy eyes and faces peering down / 2 – warped vision so that you can see over the horizon and appear to be in the bottom of a bowl / 3 – planet appears to be spinning at 1000x the normal rate (nauseating if you watch it) / 4 – flickering sheets like grey membranes shot through with pulsing yellow veins / 5 – bright light and an orchestral roar, temperature raises 10 degrees F / 6 – clouds appears to be animals fighting/fucking/running, etc.

Hungry Fog!  The fog comes in on little cat feet, a hungry stomach, and sucking tendrils like giant hungry elephant trunks.  Hide and seek as the fog breaks down doors and windows, trying to suck you into its central stomach, where you will be held above the ground, paralyzed, slowly whirled around, and digested in layers.  Lasts 1d6 hours, and usually leaves piles of bones, shoeleather, and keychains in the town square.

Insanity Sun.  The sun shrinks down into a tiny pinpoint of bluish-white light, although its still brighter than a full moon.  Everyone who looks at anything illuminated by this watery light, even for a second, goes stark, staring mad and will mumble about “the people behind the sun”.  Unless they make their save.  Town is full of people with blindfolds on, and other people trying to rob them.

Low Gravity!  Like, 1/10 of normal!  It’s like being on the moon!  You can jump really far!  Waves look really cool!  You suck at throwing things because they don’t arc the way they should!  Running is difficult without traction!  Lasts for 1d20 * 10 minutes, and then whops back to normal.

Noxious Rain causes vomiting and mutation if you get more than a few drops on you.  Save negates.  It looks like thin, golden brown fluid that smells like a pile of goats that died of dysentery last week.  Use your favorite mutation table.  Afterwards, brown mushrooms grow out of everything that isn't metal.

Painted Rain comes down in different colors.  D6: red / orange / yellow / green / blue / purple.  Mostly harmless, but the green one causes mercury poisoning and the blue one causes hallucinations.  Surfaces (and people) will stain that color until it is washed off.

Rain of Gasoline! A very bad time to have a cigarette craving.  This is why we don’t have wooden buildings anymore.  Inevitably, a fire starts by the end of it.  Air quality = shit.  Sewers, waterways, rivers, lakes, ocean runoffs will all become infernos.  Afterwards, oil stains and ashy smudges.

Rain of Horror! Roll a d6: skulls / skeletons / heads / headless corpses / garbage / ectoplasmic ghost guys that crawl around moaning piteously before dying.  20% chance that this stuff comes to life and attacks everyone.

Rain of Knives! Actually just pieces of really sharp ice.  D4: 1 – icicles / 2 – ninja star snowflakes / 3 – no physical knives but things just start getting cut / 4 – totally metal knives, I lied about the ice.

Rain of Meat!  Most of these are bitesize, but roll d20 * 100 to see how heavy the biggest chunk of meat is (in pounds).  20% of the meat is recognizable, 20% of the meat is poisonous, 20% of the meat looks pre-chewed.  A lot of carnivores slouch in from the hills.  Slorgs go into gluttony mode.  Afterwards, everyone makes bonfires.  Alternatively, fly swarms next week like Moses hates you.

Rain of Noise! Metal rods fall from the sky and vanish upon hitting the ground.  Each one sounds like a gong, or an off-balance washing machine, or a destruction derby, or a rhino in a china shop, or two skeletons fucking on a tin roof.  Conversation is impossible.  Cover your ears or save vs deafness.

Rain of Rage!  Blood rains from the sky!  Anyone who gets it in their eyes or mouth flips out in a murderous rage!  They kill their loved ones first!  All recorded music is temporarily replaced with Cannibal Corpse!  Even U2!  After the rain stops, affected people make a save to avoid being rageful forever!

Rain of Slime! Globs of carnivorous slime.  Tough to kill, but sunlight, fire, cold, and salt destroy it.  Normally immobile, but if it eats enough (falls on an unlucky herd of cattle), then giant blobs rampage through town eating people.

Rain of Soot!  Hot ashes and soot rain from the sky!  1d6 feet of it!  1 damage per round if you are caught out there.  Afterwards, snowplows and choking hazards.

Rain of Vermin! D6 frogs / locusts / lice / snakes / minnows / rats.  50% chance that the vermin are a new species.  50% chance that they all share a specific deformity (no eyes, no mouth, no head, two heads, no limbs, spider limbs, etc).

Rain of Worms! Most of these are just 3” long carnivorous worms, but roll a d4 * d4 to see how big the largest ones are (in feet).  These are stormworms, with mouths like rotary electric razors and skin in big leathery flaps.  They take minimal damage from falling.  They mostly devote their energy to eating each other, and afterwards people make hunting parties.  Like a lot of these weird weather effects, looting and burglary are rampant.

Reverse Rain pulls water from the surface up into the clouds.  If a creature isn’t indoors or underwater or something, they take 1 damage per minute as they desiccate painfully.  Pink clouds form over crowds of people who are losing a lot of blood.  Green clouds form over forests.  Most clouds formed this way are yellowish brown.

Reverse Stone Rain!  Pieces of rock break off of everything and fly into space.  Buildings look like bites are being taken out of them by invisible rats.  Your exposed skin with also break off in fingernail-sized servings and fly away.  1d6 damage per round after your clothing is gone (shouldn't take more than a couple of rounds).

Stone Rain!  Stay indoors.  Mostly pebbles, but sometimes fist-sized stones and 1d4 boulders!

Sun Invasion.  There isn’t just one sun.  There are hundreds.  Of all colors and sizes.  Swelling, swarming, and eating each other.  Sometimes things outside spontaneously combust for no reason.  Temperature raises 20 degrees F.

Thick Air.  The air has the consistency of water.  Breathing is exhausting.  Old people die.  Guns and engines don't work.  Fish swim out of the ocean and through the air.  When the weather ends, all the fish swimming over dry land drop and die, gasping faces mouthing the word “Why??????”.  The fish all die looking betrayed.

Random Weather Table


Goblin Punch invites you to enter the fascinating world of Non-Euclidean Architecture. By deviating from Euclid's fifth postulate, parallel lines no longer remain equidistant from each other. With examples of elliptic and hyperbolic geometries, the author explores how space can curve and parallel lines can either converge or diverge. Discover how these mind-bending concepts are applied in tabletop gaming, such as the enigmatic Pillar Room. Step into a room where walking 360 degrees around a square pillar can lead you to a different dimension, challenging your perception of space and reality. Prepare to have your mind twisted with this intriguing exploration.

Introduction
Non-Euclidean Architecture is how you build places using non-Euclidean geometry (Wikipedia's got a great article about it.)  Basically, the fun begins when you begin looking at a system where Euclid’s fifth postulate isn’t true.  When that happens, you are talking about a system where parallel lines don’t remain the same distance from each other.
Two basic ways of describing Non-Euclidean spaces: are elliptic and hyperbolic.
Examples of the three different geometries.
In elliptic geometry, two parallel lines will eventually curve towards each other (think of the outline of a football).  Space iscurved, and the degree of that curvature affects how long it takes the parallel lines to intersect, and what angle they make when they do.
In hyperbolic geometry, the opposite is true.  Space is curved the other way.  Parallel lines move further away and will never intersect, only grow farther apart.
Non-Euclidean geometry is weird because it looks like normal space as we know it on the local level, but on the global level it is much different.
Here's an example of "locally normal, globally weird": The globe can be a non-Euclidean space if we assume that the surface of it is actually flat.  A man standing at the equator travels to the north pole.  He turns 90 degrees to the right and travels back to the equator.  He turns 90 degrees to the right again and travels back to where he began.  If you map it out, he has made a three-sided figure with three 90 degree angles.  He has made a three-sided square!  If the surface of the Earth were actually flat, the man would be in a non-Euclidean geometry, probably running from eldritch abominations that he discovered at the north pole.
Actually, most physicists believe that we already live in a non-Euclidean space.  Like how the surface of the Earth is 2-D locally (and squares are squares) but exists in a 3-D space (and three right angles make a triangle), the universe is probably 3-D locally (where cubes are cubes) but 4-D globally (and cubes are not cubes).
The Pillar Room
How to apply this to a tabletop game?  I like to introduce it with the Pillar Room.
Imagine you go into a normal room with a square pillar in the middle.  You walk 360 degrees around the pillar, noting that it has four sides with 90 degree angles for the corners, and you are back at where you started.  Sound good?  That's a normal room.
But what if it took more than 360 degrees to get back to where you started?  What if you had to go around it twice, and it took 720 degrees to get back to the door?  Picture this: the party enters the pillar room from the only door (on the S wall).  The rogue decides to walk around the pillar and look around, but when the rogue gets back to the S side of the room, the party is gone.  The rogue can still hear the party asking him why he's hiding behind the pillar (the sound is bouncing off of both of the N walls) but he can’t see them.  In fact, the door is gone too, even though he is on the S side of the room.  Of course, he has only to walk 360 degrees in either way around the pillar in order to get back to them.
With non-Euclidean architecture, a 10’x10’ room can hold 200 sq. ft.
You might notice that this looks a lot like hyperspace, having many things occupy the same space.  In fact, the room I just described could be duplicated by putting a discrete, two-way portal from the pillar to the middle of the north wall.  This portal would lead to an identical room (that doesn’t have a door or any party members in it).  By walking around the pillar, the rogue walked through the portal into the identical room and didn’t even notice it.  But another 360 degrees around the pillar and he’ll be home.
But that’s still simple stuff.
What if it was 270 degrees to go around the pillar to get back to the starting point?  The rogue would go ¾ of the way around the pillar before getting back to the party, even though the pillar has square corners.  In fact, the rogue could stand in the NW corner of the room (after leaving the party on the S wall) and see the party in two places.  And the party could see the rogue in two places.  Note that they aren’t seeing copies, they’re actually seeing the rogue from two directions because space is curved and parallel lines meet here.  This is an elliptic geometry, and the apparently square room has three corners.  This 10’x10’ room has an area of 75 sq. ft.
If it was 180 degrees around the pillar, the pillar would be a two-sided square, and the rogue could do weird things like shoot himself in the back as he peers around a corner.  Highly elliptical spaces get weird fast, and I'll cover them in the next sub.
What if space was highly hyperbolic?  What if you had to walk around the pillar 10 times before you got back to where you started?  A 10’x10’ room on your dungeon map suddenly has 1000 sq. ft. in it (and the square pillar has 40 sides).
What if you put two of these pillars in the same room and called it a maze?  Depending on how the party twisted and turned around the two pillars, they could get very lost, and end up very far away from the door that they entered.  A 10’x20’ with two pillars could be . . . hell, as big as you want it, with as many branches as you feel like mapping.  If you put a monster in a smallish 2-pillar maze, the party will probably be less than 20’ away from the monster at any given time.  It'll be roaring like a giant garbage disposal and the party will be screaming like cheerleaders, but neither the party nor the monster will know how to reach each other (since the noise is coming from all the different paths to the other party).  Spooky, huh?
Fun Tip: When trying to map simple hyperdimensional mazes, just think of each center of the room as a single location.  Then just figure out where each of the four directions takes you (each direction around each of the pillars) and which location it leads you to.  Just because it confuses the hell out of your players doesn’t mean it has to confuse you.
Time to think big.
Don’t be afraid to extrapolate the pillar room to the whole dungeon.  Maybe a spin around the pillar takes them to a very similar dungeon—the party might not realize that they’re in a different one for a while, nor will they realize that the pillar can take them back.
Or picture a main room between two pillars, as in the two-pillar maze.  Depending on where you are in the maze, the central room can have different themes or purposes.  With the price of real estate the way it is, you can fit a 20-room dungeon in a 50'x50' area.
The pillar doesn’t have to be a pillar, either.  It can be a square hallway, where the party must travel around it three times to get back to where they started.  (This hallway has 3 north halls, 3 east halls, 3 south halls, and 3 west halls.)  It can be a hole that party jumps down into a pool of water.  It can be an arch or a mousehole.  It can be a building where the windows lead somewhere the front door doesn't.  It can be a gazebo.
Lastly, you finally have some justification for making some truly nonsensical maps.  If five (90 degree) left turns equal a right turn, you are allowed to put two rooms in the same space and confound logical attempts at map-making.
Interfacing Non-Euclidean Spaces with Euclidean Ones
You can’t.  As soon as you start trying to put three-sided squares onto your battlemap, you’re going to run into problems.  Technically, you should be mapping those sorts of spaces with weird tessellations and not graph paper.
But Non-Euclidean spaces can work well in confined starships and dungeons, where there are a limited number of ways into and out of a room.  You can have a lot of fun mapping out a room with Non-Euclidean geometry.  The trick is to remember is that they are Euclidean locally (squares still look like squares), but not on a bigger scale (a big enough squares doesn't have 4 sides anymore).
Start simple.  Maybe one lap around the pillar room leads to a hallway that curves a different way than the hallway you you came from, and leads to a different area.  Maybe clockwise turns lead you into older and older iterations of the ship, until after four turns, it dead-ends, and you are left in a decrepit corpse of a starship (and maybe the turns took you back in time, if you want to get stupid).
And if your party starts hacking at the walls between non-Euclidean space and Euclidean space. . . well, breaking the things that keep an impossible object in our universe can’t be a good thing.  Options for the discriminating DM include (but are not limited to):  Explosions (hyperbolic spaces), Implosions (elliptical spaces), Sucking Vortexes, Sentient Itches, Cthulhu, etc.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Non-Euclidean Architecture


Goblin Punch delves into the world of plot generators, bringing you the "thickest" and most ridiculous plot you'll ever need. This random plot generator will not only help craft your next story but also provide NPC names. Prepare to be entertained and inspired as Goblin Punch combines adjectives, nouns, descriptions, and superpowers to create the wildest plots. Get ready for boneless, hella dramatic men-babies, rocket-powered turtles, and summoning infinite armies of heavy-browed mooks. Click the link and let your imagination run wild with this unique and hilarious plot generator.

They say that imitation is the easiest form of creativity.  I’m okay with that.  I'm copying this idea that I got from a bunch of blogs that I like.  It's a random plot generator.

http://metalvsskin.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/the-plot.html
http://monstroustelevision.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/grotesque-horror-plot-generator.html
http://monstermanualsewnfrompants.blogspot.com/2012/12/plot-generator-from-planet-best-ever.html

I think I totally succeeded in making the stupidest one.  My plot is the thickest!  You'll never have to think of a plot again.  This generator also works if you are trying to name an NPC as long as they have a Native American-y name that's just a bunch of nouns and adjectives strung together.





Here's the template:

A _________  ___________ who is _____________and HAS THE POWER TO _______________ is _____________________ in ___________________ .

ADJECTIVE
1. Boneless
2. Autistic but crafty
3. Electric/Cyber
4. Hella Dramatic
5. Giant
6. Undercover
7. Neoluddite
8. Teenage
9. Ghost
10. Imaginary
11. Hungry
12. Political
13. Party-loving
14. Semi-Divine
15. Total Asshole
16. Flatulant
17. Well-endowed
18. Perverted
19. Baby
20. Doomsaying

NOUN
1. Gorilla
2. Pope
3. Penguin
4. Hippo
5. Rat King
6. Rocket-powered Turtle
7. Mole-man
8. Manifestation of American Exceptionalism
9. Sushi Demon
10. Man-baby
11. Murder Hobo
12. Floating Mass of Musical Spheres
13. 17th century French Monarch
14. Well-dressed Director of Personnel Resources
15. Woman with a Ludicrously Large Sword
16. Yoga Instructor
17. Wizard
18. Space Vampire
19. Incarnation of Lust
20. Ultra-bro Driven Mad by NOT ENOUGH STEROIDS

DESCRIPTION
1. Is Actually just 6000 voles in a suit
2. Is In unrequited love with Betty Ford (and has no idea she is dead)
3. Is Terrified of love (but constantly falling in it)
4. Is a “trophy-collector” from the bounty hunter dimension
5. Just saw the Abraham Lincoln movie and really wants to talk about it
6. Would be a nice guy if they only had a friend
7. Is always three feet to the left of where Bruce Willis appears to be
8. Is also a master inventor
9. Is a collector of gnomes and fancy santas.
10. Carries weapons and various sundries hidden on their person
11. Is Infected with the brain worm
12. Is Dying from cancer and totally a jerk about it
13. Is Actually a character escaped from a novel
14. Is captain of the Flying Trilobite
15. is secretly controlled by a Giant Nose in the attic
16. Is trying to get their real body back from some body-swapping dickwad (probably John Travolta)
17. Can only be described as “pendulous”
18. Is soggy at all times (Poseidon banged their mom and this is all they got)
19. Is Actually a psychic projection of one of the PCs repressed emotions
20. Is really, really drunk

HAS THE POWER TO
1. Make your arms disappear maybe forever
2. Turn weapons into hilarious, rubbery versions of themselves
3. Turn the floor into lava
4. Teleport inside people, make their skin transparent, and MESS AROUND WITH STUFF
5. Turn eyelashes into wishes and teeth into white rabbits under their control
6. Get ANYONE (anything?) pregnant with a long, soulful glance
7. Party like no other
8. Give hickeys that are totally the worst
9. Ignore damage from anything man-made
10. Shoot rattlesnakes from their fingers
11. Travel 6 seconds back in time whenever they take damage
12. Use lame cartoon physics
13. Be filthy rich (same as Batman’s power).
14. Make any drawing real as long as its drawn on their face
15. Make people stick to stuff they are touching
16. Summon an infinite army of heavy-browed, red-shirted mooks.
17. convince the players to hand over their gear and do embarrassing stuff, by using sophisms, logic, and +40 points in Diplomacy.
18. Summon the lobsters.  All of them.
19. Turn into a deer with human hands.
20. And drive cars real good.  Also jets.

VERB
1. Questing for the golden fleece
2. Looking for their spouse
3. Trying to film a movie
4. Trying to resurrect dinosaur satan
5. Prepare the way for his/her moonshark masters from the moon.
6. Just eating everyone, usually without condiments, usually while they scream and wave their arms.
7. Looking for help to be evil, because they suck at it and their dad Cthulu will eat the world if his dorky offspring doesn’t prove themselves to be worthy (not-completely-suckass) successor.
8. Looking for a good place to lay their eggs.
9. Trying to get rid of this freaky, floating cow skull that keeps following them.
10. Battling their evil (good?) twin
11. Doesn’t know they’re really dead.
12. Very slowly eating the president.
13. Teaching all the houseplants racial hatred and psychic powers
14. Challenging Death in a game of wits.
15. Claiming new land for their nation
16. Digging a really, really big hole
17. Getting everyone addicted to mugwump juice and crappy music
18. Way too into cats
19. Determined to kill all of the ugly people
20. Turning famous landmarks into their anthropomorphic warrior-slaves.

LOCATION
1. In The library at the center of the earth
2. In A hospital full of zombies
3. In A burning forest full of hostile, burning treants and terrified squirrels
4. Inside the president’s body
5. In Tunnels filled with intelligent, carnivorous trains
6. In the kung-fu dimension
7. In The Tree Palace of the Ape King
8. In Fatland
9. On the anti-Earth, hidden behind the sun
10. In an airport rapidly transforming into Dracula’s castle.
11. Trapped in a bathroom.
12. Inside a malfunctioning laser factory (full of laser elementals).
13. At Burning Man
14. An upside-down tree, growing from the moon into the atmosphere.
15. At an intergalactic car race on Roboworld.
16. On the planet of adorable, stupid, helpless bunny-men and their dark secret.
17. Inside Big Ben, now transformed into Omega Defense Mode.
18. Atop a murderous, ambulatory bridge animated by an army of poltergeists.
19. Inside a 1982 Commodore Home Computer System.
20. At the party that Alexander the Great threw after he conquered every nation he had ever heard of.

The Mighty Plot Machine


Goblin Punch takes readers on a chilling exploration of the mysterious and unsettling world of the Awakened. Delving into the psychology, behavior, and biology of these enigmatic beings that emerge after extended periods of wakefulness, the author raises questions about the dark mysteries of the human heart and the forgotten realms from which these creatures may come. With vivid descriptions and thought-provoking insights, this article promises to leave readers with a spine-tingling understanding of the Awakened and their impact on the world around them.

"We're nothing new.  We've always been here.  
YOU're the newcomers.  You're the animal that forgot that it was a man.  Stop crying, you animal, you sleepwalker!  If you opened your eyes for only an instant you would see that.  You're a race of amnesiacs, of dreaming children.  I said STOP CRYING!  You disgust me.  That's why I'm not going to explain anything else.  That's why you will die--screaming--without ever having truly woken up.  I will paint every inch of this floor withyour blood."
-An Awakened, formerly Ms. Albright, speaking to Albert Frond, immediately before his murder

There are terrible truths in this world.  The unknown things that--perhaps--we are simply better off knowing.  This is especially true if the things that call themselves Awakened are speaking the truth.




Creation
It seems that any sentient creature can become an Awakened, simply by staying awake for an extended period of time.



There are certainly some reasons to believe that it may be something inimical, or even sinister.  The barbarians of the Fangolian wastes believe that sleep is brought by Gemmon, who sleeps on a bed of black feathers and who is the twin brother of Thaskalya, or Death.



Psychology
Thesophar's interviews with Awakened showed a startling similarity in their personalities and speech patterns.  The Awakened--while they have the physiology of the person they once were--are completely alien things.

They retain all of the memories they had when they were alive, as well as considerably more.  They seem to know a great deal about anyone they speak to.  Thesophar recounts how they knew details of his childhood, education, and even things that no other soul should know



The Awakened do not seem to feel any emotions except for two: contempt and rage.  When they are not mocking someone, they are attempting to kill them.

them

Thesophar once compared them to souls:  ". . . but if these things are our souls, then they are souls that have forgotten what they once were, and what place they came from.  Perhaps it is no great Nirvana that imbues our bodies with the divine spark, and there is no Great Wheel that washes the memories of our past lives, but things such as these.  Perhaps this is the dark mystery of the human heart."

Of course, these notions are false for reasons that are so apparent that I will not reprint them here.  Thesophar himself said as much, prior to his crucifixion for the crime of blasphemy.  The Church acted rightly--Thesophar's experiments were taking on the dangerous edge of obsession.

Behavior


If you are ever called to kill one of these beasts in the streets of one of our fair cities, I pray that you are sinless, and that you harbor no secret shames in the corners of your heart.  Rest assured that the Awakened will laugh out any secrets as you cut them down.

Biology
They are strong.  About ten times stronger than they should be, by all accounts.  Thesophar recounts an event where one escaped its bonds and punched an armored guard to death through his helmet

They never sleep, of course.



While they know everyone intimately, but they cannot read minds.  This is an important distinction to make.  Whatever otherworldly sight they possess does not allow them to peer into our thoughts.  (Or if they can, they are adept at hiding it.)

Lastly, their gaze causes insomnia.  Blindfolds are no barrier--it is transmitted by their glance, not yours.  Sleep is usually impossible for at least one night, and as many as four.  Thesophar learned to work with them for two days out of the week, then spend three days writing, and then spend two days sleeping.
Sleep deprivation carries the same risks for everyone.  In order of severity, the symptoms are: irritability, forgetfulness, inattention, paranoia, and hallucinations.  Sleep deprivation seems to have no long-term risks, and all symptoms completely disappear after enough sleep.

Impact


Westermar was eventually caught by the authorities and hacked to pieces at the end of a bloody, two-hour battle.  The delirious captives were found and allowed to sleep.  They made full recoveries (save for the trauma that would be expected from such a event).

Still, the event is chilling because it suggests that we do not know all there is to know about Awakened motivations.  If one of them has the patience to create more of his number, what else are they capable of doing and towards what end?  And given what mayhem a single Awakened may cause, what could a dozen of them do?



But I'm not losing any sleep over it.
Sleep is poorly understood, but nearly all creatures have some form of it. The druids tell us that even ants sleep.  However, the best theories that purport to explain the necessity of sleep sound like disingenuous bromides.  "Sleep is a way to reset the brain." or "Sleep is how memories are sorted and filed." Or "Just as the body needs rest, so does the brain."  These answers are shallow responses to a much deeper question, allof them ultimately unsatisfying.  What lies behind the veil of sleep? The amount of sleep deprivation necessary for "onset" is 3-4 weeks in humans.  This has been confirmed in experiments carried out with certain forbidden drugs and magics--I will not print their names here lest someone think of imitating this most dangerous experiment.  Thesophar the Gilded--rest his soul--did the most research on the subject, and in both of his experiments the elf and the dwarf were murdered before they evinced anything beyond the normal characteristics ofsleep deprivations. Demihumans may be immune, but it is more likely that they simply require longer periods of sleep deprivation before becoming Awakened..  However, they never use this knowledge for any great purpose, only to antagonize, insult, embarrass, and taunt.  Attempting to get one to reveal anything useful (such as a forgotten spell or the location of a lost child) were met with the most vulgar jeering and invectives. Their speech is filled with vilest blasphemies and explicit sexual narratives: their own, their victim's, and all manner of obscene postulations.  Thesophar described them as "vile and unrepentant. . .the naked gutter of the human psyche." Surprisingly, they are completely immune to all forms of coercion, including torture.  After a few unfortunate incidents, Thesophar finally constructed a restraint device strong enough to hold one and brought in a professional torturer.  Although the man had years of experience pulling confessions from heretics and traitors, he resigned after one night, and even turned down an offer for three times the payment.  The mind reader that was brought in had a much more painfulexperience; she fell unconscious for three hours, during which her eyes bled constantly.  When she awoke, she had no memory of the prior week and had developed permanent (but mild) insomnia. They speak of bizarre, almost nonsensical things.  However, several phrases and ideas are common enough to warrant a mention here: "the world behind the sun", "dreamers/sleepers/sleepwalkers" (referring to humans), "the coldness that birthed us all", and "the place between".  The best narrative that Thesophar was able to piece together was that all sentience--NOT "sentient creatures" but sentience itself--was once a thing very similar to an Awakened, or at least from a similar origin.  Sentience is. . . or they are sentience.  They are our own consciousnesses--the thing that says, "I think, therefor I am"--but from a horrific, external source that we have all forgotten.  It is only by sleep deprivation that the "mind of the flesh" falls away and our naked consciousness is allowed to see the bare truths of the universe, the cosmic underpinnings of all things. . . and to remember what we were, each of us,before we were conceived. Violence, mayhem, and desecration are their only imperatives.  Pain is a joke.  Death holds no fear.  The afterlife is no mystery.  They seek to cause as much tragedy as possible before their violent deaths, which they revel in.  Those that escaped, or those that occured "in the wild", wade through carnage, reveling in bloodshed, pain, and terror.  When they are struck down--usually by cadres of armored knights or battlemages, their last words--crackling out through thehowls of laughter and broken lips--are always the darkest secrets of their destroyers, often to the shock and shame of those around them. , even though the Awakened's hands were shattered, pulpy masses of bloody bones by the end of it.  They can--and have--broken down heavy prison doors simply by throwing their bodies against it hundreds of times, even though they break their arms, shatter their ribs, and even fracture their necks.  Thesophar quickly learned that he could never get any writing done in the same building as them, simply because of the constant noise of them hurlingthemselves against the door, constantly screaming. They are difficult to kill.  For years, Thesophar was convinced that they were some form of undead, only becoming convinced to the contrary after several vivisections.  They laugh at injuries.  Thesophar tells of how they started removing the hands of the Awakened, simply as a safety measure, but ceased the practice when the subjects started gnawing off the flesh of their arms below the elbow in order to use the bones of their forearms asstabbing weapons.  Those who would fight them are advised to break their legs first, in order to limit their mobility.  In once instance, an Awakened that jumped from a great height intentionally fell on its chest and face in order to prevent breaking its legs.  The brain must be completely destroyed (down to the brainstem) in order to halt them.  Disemboweling or exsanguination will not kill them--they seem be to able to hold themselves togetherby sheer willpower for several hours.  But then, several hours are all they need.  They seek death, and they are quick to find it. Up until 1193 TFM, there was a known drug addict in Clansbrad by the name of Simon Westermar.  Although the circumstances are not fully understood, Simon became an Awakened (although Thesophar would say that he died and was replaced by an Awakened).  Rather than seeking the usually murderous path to a gory death, Simon kidnapped members of his family and fellow students at his Artist's Retreat (to which he belonged), and held them captive forseveral weeks.  During this time he physically abused them while keeping them awake by staring at them for several minutes every day.  By the time they were rescued, some of them had been awake for over two weeks. Additionally, there are the many reports that the drug cult known as the Wind on the Marilanth Petal includes several Awakened in their ranks.  While I would like to dismiss these rumors as exactly that, the crime scenes that the Wind leaves behind do share a certain resemblance to the acts of an Awakened (or so I'm told).  I would, of course, pay a handsome fee to anyone who could confirm or disprove this perniciousrumor.  I'm afraid I cannot shake the notion that there might be some truth to these rumors, simply because of how sinister the proposition is.

The Awakened


Goblin Punch takes a strikingly dark and poetic dive into the world of the Volguloi, a mysterious and grotesque creature. This thought-provoking essay explores themes of memory, transformation, and the desperate quest for identity in a macabre and atmospheric setting. As the Volguloi navigates its rebirth and grasps for the remnants of its former life, readers are taken on a chilling journey filled with vivid imagery and unsettling revelations. Prepare to be captivated by this tale of ancient magic and the terrifying consequences that follow.

I've decided that I want to write just like Patrick Stuart of False Machine. This is my first cheap attempt at the most sincere form of flattery.




Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, butfats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl. The Festival, H.P. Lovecraft

Not quite eyes, but close enough. They look like lumps of white phosphorus hidden inside a cistern. Cheap, almost accidental. The watery disks flicker to life and blink at the pale half-colors. The eyes are new. They were not there yesterday.

But the mouth was. Perhaps it has always been there. A red tongue flickers through the sphincter-like opening, licks the dirt from the lips. Tastes the air. New scents for old things: baby-soft mice in their holes, the bacterial engine warming a corpse, blue smoke from the campfires, pinpricks of dead pollen.

And it remembers.

It remembers the long midnight and the lookout's shout and the desperate flight. It remembers dying, the axe breaking the skull and gouging a new fontanel. The beard of the axe dug deep, fingers pulling through red ribbons. A moment of transfiguration, and then nothing at all.

It has no skull anymore. Its head is a muscular appendage, ringed with annular muscles and tactile hairs.

It was a wizard once, it thinks. Tangled skeins of magic were once knitted by its nimble fingers. Where did the fingers go? Trying to remember is like picking at a scab. It picks and it picks and it is not disturbed by how much it bleeds because it needs to remember what the flesh was like beneath the scab, but then the pain is too much and it must cease.

It had a family, and it had companions. It had a cat, a familiar. The cat is about twenty feet away, and its tiny corpse makes a tiny sound as it is stirred by the multitudes of maggots, undergoing their sundry transformations into flies.

It had a name, but it does not know it. It will know it again when it is called again. Perhaps.

The thing crawls from the eye socket of the dead wizard. It is frustrated at its lack of hands, but its vermiform body propels it smoothly. It exits the skull wetly. After a pornographic panoply of sounds it plops into the red-wet grass. The newborn looks up and sees starlight for the first time.

No, that's not right. The reborn looks up and sees starlight again. No, that doesn't seem right either. It doesn’t know how this has happened, but it knows it has escaped death. It has already grown eyes. Perhaps things will soon be set right.



But it remembers the old incantations, even if the only consonants available to it are labial and glottal. Spells were once golden birds that flew from its lips, their wings beating to a syllabic. Now, its spells are stillborn things that struggle for a moment before dying, sometimes accomplishing their goals, sometimes not.



And then, through happy circumstance, it will murder a man.



It will emerge from the man’s belly days later amid a drumroll of corpse gas. It has grown fat and quick. What was once small enough to wrap between cupped hands is now a muscular appendage as big as a baby's arm. It will stumble off on newly formed legs, seeking shelter from the lashes of the sun. It found no answers in the man’s brain, only a greater form of alienation.



The worm that dreamed it was a man has learned that it is neither. And above the echoes of esoteric thought and the abandoned aspirations of personhood, the tubular brain sings the inexorable Creed of the Worm: Burrow and watch. Creep and kill. Eat and grow.
Summary
Volguloi are formed with a certain species of worm eats the brain of a wizard. After a long meal, the worm emerges from the skull greatly changed. It has half-remembered memories, and it can cast spells. It has a halfway formed mouth, and a set of ambitions that involve recovering its identity and eating more human brains.

The first goal is impossible, since the identity is illusory. The second goal is the central nature of all volguloi, and if left to their own devices, it is one that they invariably reach.

The more brains they eat, the bigger they become. As big as a child, or perhaps a man, or perhaps even larger if their diet is rich enough. They invariably go mad from the conflux of competing memories, though their spellcasting becomes potent under the strange tides of arcane cerebrospinal fluids. They wax clever and canny, and older ones will harbor secret ambitions and speak speak several languages in a bubbling, imprecise tongue.

Not only do they grow in size, but their shapes become more refined. Clavicles, fingernails, and sinuses will all eventually emerge from the wet clay of their bodies. They eventually resemble their prey, but it is only a monstrous imitation. Nothing will ever hide their nature. From their unnatural births to their writhing deaths, they are worms.
But they do not. It is trapped inside a stranger's body, one that is tiny and feeble. The shock and the optimism from that first night are replaced with a crinkled, impotent rage that you and I will never know. It is the salt-stung frustration of incompleteness. It spends nights weeping under toadstools. It can barely speak, though it tries its best. Its vermiform mouth slobbers and strains, until finally it chews the wordsout, trying to summon a name, a history, a home. And as the days turn to years, the desperation mounts. In the beating rains of black forests, watery eyes will peer down a burrow, meeting the gaze of the rabbit trembling in his home.  The worm-thing will spit curses and spells, and the rabbit will blacken and die. And the frustrated worm will crawl down and tear open its belly. It will spend some days inside the rabbit, gnawing and brooding. It will seek solacebut find only entrails. The man will never know what killed him. He will never see what crawls out from between the tree roots, gliding though the grass like a snake. He will never hear the sibilant syllables gurgled out in wet victory. He will never see its soft mouth lick apart the soft lamina of his eye and slip inside. Like a rat chewing wires, it will suck the nerves out from his eye socket, and slip intohis brain. A few more murders. A few more nights spent inside the corpses, cocooned in isolation and sleepless introspection. It has arms and hands and fingers and a half-remembered face. It has paved over gravelly uncertainty with dreadful conclusions. It has killed and it has dined. When it was cornered, it lashed out with poisonous phantasms and paralytic manifestations. When it was pursued, it pulled the wet earth over itself and dug deep. Deeper than thefootsteps and the shovels.

Volguloi 

Goblin Punch

The House of Hours

The Pastoral Life of the Lavei Family

Lumpy Space Monkeys

Lady Evica

Sister Witches and Monastic Wizards

We've all what a terrible thing unmitigated addiction can be, and have seen lives and bodies scarred by substance abuse.  In fantasy games, drugs are usually magnified, which makes for some powerfully negative side effects to addiction.

So, it's tough to get players to use a lot of drugs.

My solution is to make drugs powerfully useful. I intend to make drugs shoulder some (all?) of the duties that potions normally bear.

Scrap did some cool drugs, once.

Here's my take on the matter. It's not very realistic, but whatever.

Drug Rules

Here's the big idea: you're on a track for drugs.  It looks like this:



Clean - Habituated - Addicted - Dependent


At the end of every week in which you used the drug, roll under Wis or go up a step in the Addiction track.



Clean: Means you are completely drug free.


Habituated: You don't need to use the drug, and you can quit whenever you want.  You get +2 to Save vs Side Effects and Overdose.

Addicted: You need to use the normal amount of the drug (either 1/day or 1/3 days, use your best judgement for each drug).  You get +4 to Save vs Side Effects and Overdose.

Dependent:  You use the drug 3x as much as the average user, and need 3x as much to get an effect.  You get +6 to Side Effects and Overdose.  You get -6 to Relapse and Withdrawal checks.  You'll have an extremely hard time quitting without help (or necessity).

Quitting is automatic if you are only Habituated, but otherwise there are 2 steps. You can attempt this 1/week, and it can move you back a step on the addiction track if you succeed.

Relapse: Roll under Wisdom to see if you can resist taking drugs this week. If you are unable to get drugs despite your best efforts, you also go to step 2.
Withdrawal: Roll under Constitution to see if you go into withdrawal.  If you feel yourself going into withdrawal, you can always use some more of the drug to avoid it.
Congrats! You move back a step on the addiction track.

Overdose: If you get drugs from a sketchy source or consume them in a sketchy way, there is a 1-in-20 chance to overdose.  Pretty much all sources are sketchy sources when you first meet them, but they become trustworthy over time.  You can also overdose intentionally.

And don't forget why you took the drug in the first place.

Main Effects: This is why.

Side Effects: Roll under your Con to avoid these.  You cannot choose to fail this (always roll it).

Drugs are honestly pretty hard to make succinct rules for.  You got addiction, withdrawals, relapses, overdoses, side effects, infected needles, etc. 

Price assumes a silver standard.










Non-Magical Drugs







Dagra Wood is for dragons.
a.k.a. Dragonsbane, Firewood

In the swamps west of the mountains, you'll find squat, barrelchested trees that always grow alone.  These trees are called Black Dagras, and they are beloved by dragons. When the wood is dried and roasted, it emits an odor that is pleasing to dragons.  When it is scratched and inhaled, the resultant dust causes a certain euphoria to grip the dragon.  They describe the sensation as feelings of warmth, heaviness, and giddiness.

In the wild, dragons will rub their snouts on the trees, eventually grinding the black dagras into sawdust and spending afternoons coiled around the tree, sleeping. These are popular spots for ambushing dragons, and so the great beasts are often very cautious when approaching, and take other measures besides.  They are no fools.

In the cities, urbanized dragons buy the things by the pallet. Cushions are filled with dagra shavings, and some dragons have dagra posts installed inside their houses that they rub their snouts against. A smooth, polished nose is a sure sign that a dragon has been indulging in a significant amount of dagra. It has a connotation of being a crutch for soft and pampered dragons (with the accusation often coming from their wilder counterparts) and most urban dragons will deny or downplay their usage.

Main Effect: Temporarily suspends any negative emotions and allows for restful sleep.

Addiction: None.

Overdose: Deep sleep for 3d6 minutes.  Exceptionally brave thieves have engineered this by blowing a tube full of dagra shavings directly up a dragon's nose.  This is foolish, since it takes 1d6 rounds for the overdose to kick in.






Delago is for farmers.
a.k.a. Bug, Racky-Tam, Twigfellow, Vine

In some parts of the world, this creeping vine is the most abundant crop.  It's ragged fans of pale green leaves are a common sight in many farms, where it is air-cured in open barns or fire-cured over smoldering hardwood fires.  It relaxes the nerves and allows for easier concentration.  Habitually smoking it will eventually bleach your teeth a dazzling shade of white.

It is common in pipes and in hookahs (when mixed with fruit pulp) and is sold is pouches of shredded leaf. When it is rolled into a papyrus cigarette, it is called a pick and is associated with criminals (pipes are associated with wizards). Picks are usually sold in tightly wound bundles, and sometimes come in useful when you need to light something on fire.

Certain wizards prize this leaf above all others.  They call it racky-tam and enchant their pipes the same way other wizards enchant their staffs. These wizards are called ringmages, after the smoke rings they blow, and they are known for their wisdom, childishness, and secret traditions.

Price: 1s for 20 cigarettes or 30 bowls-worth or shredded delago.

Effect: +2 to save against fear and inhaled poisons. Also makes you look cool.

Addiction: None

Overdose: Nausea and headache.  -1 to hit for 4 hours.








Delobia/Delgum

a.k.a. Bodice-ripper (delobia), Bonce (delobia), Mortar (delgum), Macky (delgum)

Delago is sometimes concentrated into a thick brown paste called delobia, which as much the same effects but in a much more concentrated form.  It burns at a hotter tempurature, and so can only be smoked from very long pipes (up to 3 feet!) to avoid burning the mouth/lungs.  It is also sometimes mixed with gum and sugar and then held in the mouth against the gums; this form is called delgum, which causes gums to darken and skin to break out in freckles. Habitual users have tons of freckles.

Price: 2s per dose.

Main Effect: +4 to save against fear, +2 to save against negative emotion-based effects, including pain.

Addiction: Immune to positive emotion-based effects, including inspiration and high morale.

Dependence: Cumulative -1 to all initiative checks.  Slow speech.  Apathy. 

Withdrawal: You are bedridden with nausea and nightmares for 1d6 days if you fail a save, or merely 1 day if you pass it.

Overdose: Screaming, seizures, cardiac arrest.  Easy save (at +2) or die.








Doglands Lotus is for the decadent.
a.k.a. Lady Pillows

This big, pillowy lotuses are actually a type of cactus fruit.  It just happens to resemble a pale yellow lotus. They grow in only one place: the Lotus Mounds of the Doglands.  These are big, domed colonies of communal cacti with their own ecosystems. The narrow, spiked pathways that wind through the interior are home to the lotus wives, who are nourished by the lotuses. Since harvesting them always involves encountering the lotus wives, and encountering the lotus wives always involves risking the Dog King's wrath, the lotuses fetch an appropriately high fee.

A dose is a single, succulent lotus. The juicy "petals" are plucked and eaten like an artichoke. The crisp skin of the lotus holds a sweet, pinkish pulp. After ingestion, the user feels a surge of confidence and libido. Habitual usage eventually turns the hands and feet purple, as if stained by raspberry juice, starting with the areas around the finger- and toenails. These areas of purple skin are permanent.  Normal skin tone can be regained with dyes and bleaches, but the purple will return. People usually cover up their purple extremities, but they can be a point of pride among certain communities.

Price: 15s per lotus.

Main Effect: +1 to attacks, damage, and saves. +2 on Charisma checks.  Lasts 1 hour.

Side Effect: You blush at the drop of a hat.

Addiction: Whenever you take damage, you don't find out how much damage it was until the beginning of your next turn. This doesn't allow you to keep fighting longer than would normally be possible--it merely delays the pain response for a few seconds.  You have a harder time planning ahead, since you don't know how much damage you took last turn until after you declare actions for this turn.  You might declare actions at the start of a turn and then drop dead when you actually attempt to take actions.

Dependence: Make a save every week or else you will abandon all of you other goals to pursue eating lotuses full time. This usually involves traveling to the Doglands (where lotuses grow on trees!). This usually involves the character becoming an NPC.

Withdrawal: Inconsolable depression for 1d3 days.  Weeping, uncontrolled sobbing, everything upsets you, usually towards sadness (but sometimes towards irritability).  You get -1 to all attacks, damage, and saves, and -6 to Charisma checks. You need to save each day or else you refuse to get out of bed.

Overdose: Unconscious for 1d20 hours, then make a save.  If this save is failed, the coma continues for another 1d20 days (possible to die of dehydration). Then another save is required.  If this second save is failed, the coma is permanent.






Jopeth is for the rich.
a.k.a. Stickler, King's Lunch, Modern Panther

Jopeth is made from the spines of an eel.  Actually, that's false, it is literally the spine of an eel with all the flesh removed and stored in a tiny barrel of brine.  They're about 1'-2' long and have a long, visible stinger at the end that the eels use to paralyze their prey and rich people use to get high.

Everything looks bright, everything sounds loud (not in an unpleasant way) but you have a hard time distinguishing dull orange from bright orange.  You also have a hard time telling apart a whisper from a shout.

Price: Average of 50s per spine.  Each spine holds a number of doses proportionate to its size (2d4) which theoretically corresponds to cost.

Main Effect: You gain 1d6 temporary HP.  These are like hit points that are damaged before normal hit points.  They never last more than 1 hour, and they never stack with other temporary hit points.  You also see faces in clouds (vivid ones), hear voices on the wind, and find meaning where there is none.

Addiction: You automatically fail all saves against illusions. You are an unreliable watchman due to the number of false alarms.  On the plus side, nothing seems surprising or shocking anymore.

Dependence: All healing from magic, booze, and inspiration is reduced by 1 HP (stacks up to -3 HP).  Your max HP is also 1 point higher.

Withdrawal: 1d6 hours of vomiting, which reduces your HP to 0.  For the next 1d3 days, you cannot raise your HP above half.

Overdose: Paralysis for 3d6 hours and the effects of Addiction are permanent.  EVERYTHING IS REAL.




unrelated

Hensetta is for wizards. (don't lose spells)
a.k.a. Chicken Poof, Wizard Shit, Goblin Dust

Harvested from a certain kind of mat-forming algae that grows on the ultra-saline Saltsea, Hensetta is ground up into a paste, which is then made into spherical lozenges, which are then wrapped in fragrant leaves and then swallowed.  It gives the user laser-like focus on what you are doing, but blinds them to peripheral concerns. It'll also fuck up your kidneys after a few years of usage.

Still the stuff is popular among wizards (it "steadies their minds") and archers (it "steadies their hands").

Price: 5s per ball.

Main Effect: If a wizard is struck by an opponent while casting a spell, there is only a 25% chance of losing the spell (instead of 100%). All attack-roll penalties due to movement, cover, and dim light (but not total darkness) are halved.

Side Effect: You never notice anything except things that are supremely obvious. You are always surprised in combat if the enemy approaches from a direction that you were looking at. You are horrible at conversations, since you are unable to think about anything except what you are already talking about, with tedious precision.

Addiction: It takes you an extra round to rouse yourself from sleep. Eating meat makes you horribly ill.

Dependence: You lose the ability to count objects higher than 3.  You can still do math just fine.

Withdrawal: The world confuses and alarms you, and you get -1 to attack rolls for a day.

Overdose: Become so focused on objects in your surroundings that you are unable to focus on other things.  You might start focusing on a glass of water and become trapped in a cycle of horrible hyper-focus, unable to look away or even think about anything except the glass of water.  You forget that things exist that aren't glasses of water.  As paralysis for 2d6 hours.





Talakeshi Jelly is for thugs.
a.k.a. Thrum, Ambrosia, Jackal Jism

It varies in color from red to orange to pink.  It is sold in little tins (like lip balm) that are usually stamped with the colorful design of the manufacturer.  It can be absorbed in all sorts of way.  Some people rub it in their eyes, others put it in their rectum or vagina (where it is absorbed through the mucus membrane), and others will rub it in a wound or skinless patch.  It can be eaten, but since this dulls the effects, only newbies ever eat it.

It is beloved by soldiers and pit fighters. Asria actually experimented with giving it to all of their royal guards, but discontinued after a number of incidents of violent psychosis. Still, it is very popular among those who fight for a living, and is extremely common in some neighborhoods, with certain street gangs taking large doses every night to prepare themselves for any ultraviolence.

Price: 5s a dose.

Main Effect: You get +4 to all initiative checks for the next 4 hours.  (If using my system, treat your Dex as 4 points higher when rolling for initiative, max 18).  (If you don't use individual initiative, give them +1 to hit with all Str-based attack rolls).

Side Effect: Tremors cause you to get -1 to all Dex-based attack rolls.

Addiction: You eat twice as much as normal.  You are always sweaty, and your skin is fever hot.  Your heartbeat is terrifying fast, and you can't help but lose weight down to the level of "thin".  If something causes you to go insane at this point, it will always take the form of murderous psychosis.  (Jelly will not drive you insane on its own.)

Abuse: You get another +4 to all initiative checks (+10 total) and +1 to all Str-based attack rolls, and eat three times as much as normal.  You lose weight down to the level of "morbid anorexia". 

Withdrawal: 25% chance of horrible diarrhea for 24 hours.

Overdose: Intense, whole body tetanus.  All the muscles clench tighter than you would have thought possible.  Teeth crack against each other, biceps tear themselves off their tendons, and abdominal muscles contract until the viscera are ejected out the anus. Understandably, stronger creatures are more at risk. Roll OVER your Strength score to survive.  Failure indicates that you have snapped your own neck or back and died horribly.  Success means cracked teeth and agonized muscles. -2 to all attack and Con checks for 1 week.





Mevverwen
a.k.a. Hammer, Honesty's Antidote, and Brain Polish

Usually distributed in narrow bamboo tubes, about 1' long.  Mevverwen can be snorted by yourself, but the preferred method of usage is for a friend to blow the contents of the tube directly up the nostril of a the user.

The tube contains a powder made from a rare type of sky-kelp that grows in the Sea of Sartoga.  It is harvested by men on canoes who sneak up on the kelp (if the kelp noticed them, it would deflate its balloon sacks and retract itself beneath the water.  One man jumps on the kelp while another man prepares to cut the balloon sack off.  The kelp resents this attack, and will withdraw it's length beneath the water, carrying the kelp-diver with it.  The men on the surface try to cut as many of the balloons off as they can while the diver tries to stay down as long as he can, and then cut as much kelp as possible from the anchor.  If successful, the kelp-hunters will get 50' or more of slimy, fibrous kelp. It's dangerous work, since the Sea of Sartoga has hundreds of weird, deadly types of sharks.

It's popular among burnouts

Price: 25s a dose.

Main Effect: You will absolutely forget the last 30 seconds and instead be filled with a mild, dopey euphoria.  If you saw something horrible in that time, you will forget it (and this can be used to negate any insanity points you might have gained).  If some major change occurred to your brain in that time (insanity, charm, mind control), there is a 50% chance that it doesn't "stick".

If someone blows it up your nose while you are inhaling you get no save.  If you merely snort it by yourself or if someone merely blows it in your face, you MUST make a save to negate the effects.

Addiction: You get -10% XP from all rewards, as you forget a lot what you experience.

Abuse: You lose 100xp per week and forget everyone's names. You no longer gain insanity points and any permanent changes to your psyche are negated. Traumatic events are automatically blocked out.

Withdrawal: Insight into the underlying secrets of the universe cause madness.  You gain some insanity points (if your system uses them) or you have a 25% chance to go insane (if your system doesn't).

Overdose: Total amnesia.  You forget your name and your history.  And then make a save, and if you fail, you lose a level and make another save, with another chance of losing a level, and so on, and so on. 

Note: If the party wants to abuse this drug (and they should)  by blowing this stuff in the faces of guards so that they forget the last 30 seconds, it will totally work, but then the guard will be walking around with a shit-eating grin on his powder-covered face.  Someone may notice (unless you wipe it off somehow).







This post actually ended up being a lot more work than I thought.  I'll do 5-7 magic drugs in a later post.

Drugsdrugsdrugs

I don't think Nalta will play much of a part in a Land of Flowers game, but whatever.





Nalta and the Glimmering Isles



Seven Years Upon The Fish



The greatest ocean in the world is the Sea of Fish, and the men who sail upon are the greatest of sailors.



The Sea of Fish is sometimes also called the "Fishy Blue" or sometimes just the "Fish".  A sailor might say something like, "aye, I spent seven years upon the Fish, an watched her swallow me mates and me son, though I still love her, I do".



It is said that the gillmen call it the "Sea of Apes" because of all the humans sailing on it.

In the southwestern quadrant of the Fish (known as a mild and playful expanse, with entire stretches of emerald-green water blanketed by sea-lilies and lumber-flies) you will find the island of Nalta.  It has a smaller, companion island called Namboora.  Between them and to the north are the Glimmering Isles and the Megara Reefs, which were believed to be cursed for a long time (because of all the ships that disappeared while sailing between them).



It wasn't until the Three Carpenters Who Became Kings sailed through the Megara Reefs in their horizon-fetcher (picture an giant outrigger canoe crossed with a galleon, with two main decks and a canvas tent above that) that they discovered that it was home to a large city of gillmen.



The Three Carpenters Who Became Kings helped settle the island and died their first deaths, just in time for the Naltese islands to be conquered by the empire Cheox.  After a generation, Nalta had been transformed into a land of huge plantations and orchards.  Most of their produce went to feed Cheox.  When Cheox fell (within a few decades of conquering Nalta), the liberated citizens tore down the statues, but set up their own government in imitation of the one they had just escaped.



A Tedious History of Violence



In the years that followed, Nalta attempted to establish itself as a kingdom of plantations.  But Nalta is a desirable prize, with fertile lands and beautiful beaches.  Various forces struggled for that narrow island, and the history since then has been clotted with warlords and plantation kings, with dynasties springing up and falling sometimes in the space of a single season.  We'll skip all that tedious history then, except for one warlord, named Tora-torog, The Biter of Fists.



Tora-torog was the only warlord to unite all of the islands.  He was a Zyrolean marinel (monkey-tailed sailor dude) from the Changoor dynasty.  It is said that in the Battle of Angry Faces (which united all of Nalta) the fatalities were so high that the rivers ran red with blood.  They also say that before the Battle of Burning Tongues bananas were a sickly yellow, rather than the pleasing red they are today.  The sundry bones of those buried beneath the orchards nourishes and sustains those great fruits.



Almost immediately after conquering Nalta, Tora-torog, The Biter of Fists began to go powerfully insane.



Many strange aspects of Nalta can be attributed to Tora-Torog.  He built an enormous series of dikes and earthworks called the Serpentsgrip Hills, ostensibly to keep his "life essence" from washing away from him (possibly referring to his semen).  He built the Secret Beds of Dogs as a series of tombs for his beloved "dogs", hid the entrances, and killed all of the builders that didn't want to build another tomb for one of this "dogs".  The Secret Beds are sized for dogs (no hallway is higher than 5') and all of the known ones have been looted.  Tora-torog's definition of a dog was a loose one, and the Secret Beds hold humans, fish, horses, and even a few richly clothed rocks that Tora-Torog thought resembled dogs.  But what Tora-Torog is most known for is the House of All Gods.






The House of All Gods



Tora-Torog was a follower of Furo, the marinel religion that has been described as the pinnacle of pan-inclusive idolatry.  The Followers of Furo believe that the world is full of numerous small gods that physically reside in their idols, which they trade like mercantile commodities.  However, Furo believes that all gods are part of the Furo omni-pantheon, even those of other religions (which is why they consider all temples to be their temples, and even a great deal of things that aren't temples).



Anyway, Tora-Torog decided that he would build a mansion for the gods to live in when they wearied of living in their idols.  By following their instructions, no matter how nonsensical, he would build the ultimate vehicle of divine accomodation--a precursor to heaven on earth.



The House of All Gods resembles a city, if all of the buildings were taken from disparate parts of the world and them smashed together so that there are no streets.  (This is not an exaggeration.  In at least one instance The Biter of Fists paid a clan of pirates an exorbitant fee to steal the Tower of Yen from the monks who venerated it, and install it in the center of the House of All Gods.)  There's even a few ships assimilated into its mass.



In fact, much of the construction seems impossible: buildings attached  upside down, a heavy stone cairns stacked atop a wooden hunting lodge (complete with trophies), and even a 300' bridge that appears to stuck into the ground sideways without bending or falling.  The common consensus is that Tora-Torog, despite his  madness, actually received assistance from the gods.  



So, at least in this respect, Tora-Torog was not just a madman (there are those who believe he was the sanest man who ever lived), and if this is true, then the Biter of Fists succeeded in his goal, and the House of All Gods is a literal incarnation of the gods' realm, as well as a preview of the (apparently incomprehensible) afterlife that we will all one day experience.



One sweltering summer day, Tora-torog was indulging in an eating contest among his closest friends and family (he was a champion eater) when he attempted to eat a vast mouthful of baby octopi, who clung to the inside of his throat and choked him.  His brothers promptly hoisted the cutlery and declared war on each other.  Within a week, the islands were plunged back into war, and men no longer eat more than one baby octopus at a time unless they wish to tempt fate.



The Three Plantations



The Three Great Plantations of Nalta are more like small city-states that organize themselves according to the old lines of indentured servitude and slavery that were common in the Cheoxian era.  For example, the nobles eschew traditional titles, and instead are known as Taskmasters, Lasher, and Master of Plums, even though those titles have lost much of their original meaning, although the Lashers still carry whips (often bejeweled) at the side of their impeccable, white, tailored suits.



To use modern terminology, Nalta is a failed state.  The islands are technically in a state of perpetual war, but the actual experience is better described as an extremely tenuous peace characterized by willful ignorance.



Walking across the countryside, it is not uncommon to find a group of soldiers from one plantation drinking iced mango juice beneath a sprawling banyan and then, just over the next hill, a group of soldiers from a different plantation-city will be playing a lively game of lawn darts, while prostitutes hang off their arms.  If you attempt to alert either group to the existence of the other, they will grow unfriendly and accuse you of lies.



Although the people of Nalta are varied, they have grown tired of generations of war, and most would rather ignore each other than engage in open warfare.  This attitude does not extend to the upper echelons, and the leadership of each plantation hates each other with a contemptuous rage.  Given the opportunity, they would rather attack the other plantations.  However, when the orders are given to march on the enemy, the armies conspire with each other, and elaborate marches lose themselves in the hillocks and orchards, and in the end, each army is miraculously unable to locate the other.  About half of all military campaigns end with each army drinking punch with their distant relatives, or a skinny dipping on some white sand beach.



The other half of all military campaigns end in battles, retreat, flanking maneuvers, and many young men dying in banana groves.  Because it is not all empty posturing, and not everyone prays for peace.



The closest thing to a neutral ground is Bitefist Bay, which occupies a central location on the main island.  The cognitive dissonance is even stronger here, and you may even find opposing soldiers walking past each other on the same street, each doing their very best to pretend the other one isn't there.  Skirmishes are very rare in Bitefist Bay, because the whole islands depends on the commerce that moves through it.  Nalta is not self-sufficient, and relies on trade for clothing, iron, and other finished products.



There are three big plantation cities, each controlled by a different group in a different area, and each is known for a different type of liquor.  They compete for control of the islands but especially for the House of All Gods (which is the same thing).


Vast and subtle enchantments were wrought that persist to this day. In the forests, the trees grow in straight rows, and small birds will explode in a shower of feathers if someone pantomimes shooting them with a bow (much to the delight of children).







Papa Temnoc and the Golden Claw



The gillmen are some of the first inhabitants of Nalta, and they have since returned in force to claim it.  There is a savage clan of red gillmen living in the Glimmering Isles and the Megara Reefs, who call themselves the Golden Claw.  The center of their operations is  Pellamar Rugosa, a dormant caldera just below the surface of the ocean. Their leader is called Papa Temnoc, who is a gigantic (7') tall gillman who has had one of his hands replaced with a golden claw after losing it in battle.



The Golden Claw Clan is also known to use a great number of enslaved crab men for battle and labor.  Crab men are as big as ogres and covered in armor.  Their crabs are drugged with opiates and painted (both fearsome patterns and vulgar graffiti) and then ridden into battle.  You've never really lived until you've been killed by a giant crab covered in neon pornography.



Digression: Gillmen are basically merfolk with legs.  Gills are basically semi-external lungs that rely on a large surface area for gas exchange.  So basically, they look like pale green-blue humans with holes cut out between all of their ribs.  Like, you could poke a stick beween between their ribs and almost poke their spine.  Human lungs are filled with alveoli; but gillmen ribs are filled with what appear to be bushy masses of red filaments, which are visible between their lungs.  See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mneDhOtVEQw.



Another Digression: Although gillmen can breathe water and swim like fish, the fastest way to travel across the ocean is still by boat.  These are strange, fusiform things, with most of the ship's mass beneath the water and the sails sticking out above the water.  Sort of like footballs/tuna with a bad infestation of canvas.



Papa Temnoc dreams of capturing the House of All Gods, flooding it, and filling with schools of small, tasty fish.  The Golden Claw is known for producing a type of alcohol called salavoka, which is made from the gas-filled bladders of a type of succulent kelp.  Salavoka is a dark black liquid that is usually diluted before drinking, when it turns a sort of rich yellow color.  It is sold and served from small wooden barrels, each of which is packaged with a single sea urchin (meant to guarantee purity, since the urchin will rot if the alcohol content is not high enough.  Salavoka is traditionally consumed from hollowed out urchins.  After the barrel is finished, the urchin is either carefully eaten or thrown hard against something wooden, where it sticks.



Mad King Ketch and the Darklanders

On the west side of the main island, you'll find settlements filled with Darklanders, exiled from their homeland twenty years ago.  They are led by a man called Mad King Ketch, who has two wives, and two daughters with each one.  Although he controls farms and orchards, he lives in the small swamp there, which is called the Brackenwald.

Within the Brackenwald, he resides aboard the remains of the Ship of Fools, the same vessel that carried him here from the Darklands.  The Ship of Fools was filled with the cast-offs of society: madmen, criminals, and blunderers.  Although the Ship of Fools is no longer seaworthy, it is still most definitely swampworthy.  You may occasionally see it being towed around the swamp by teams of ragged crocodile-men and wild-eyed darklanders.  It was a big, flat-bottomed scow before it was marooned in the swamp.  Now screech owls nest in the portholes and moss throttles the figurehead (a horse).  Black swamp-wolves climb up the netting and sleep beside the lepers. The masts have all been broken apart, and made into totem poles that decorate the swamp. This is where Mad King Ketch holds court.

The Darklanders have been joined by a great number of lepers and runaways since then, building their own village of lost souls called Molossus.  And although they are still called "the darklanders", the ash-skinned northerners actually make up a minority of the group.  Some of them can't even speak darkentongue, and most of them can see see colors.

Mad King Ketch exports black rum.  ("The blacker the tongue, the warmer the sun.")  It is made from the sweet fruit of enormous swamp ferns.  The black color comes from caramelized fern-fruit and a period of aging in charred barrels.

It is said that Mad King Ketch's two daughters are brine witches, as are his two wives, as are his two mothers-in-law.  The Ship of Fools is guarded at all times by Oshi-Oto, the Worm-Dragon, a dragon, although he is barely recognizable as one now.  In his youth, a flesh-eating disease robbed him of his arms, legs, eyes, and scales.  The only respite the mad, crippled dragon has is in black rum, which he insists keeps his disease at bay and drinks by the gallon.

Lady Dalfeen and the First Circus

Tora-torag was a scion of the Changoor dynasty, and that proud tradition is continued today in the First Circus.  Led by Lady Dalfeen and her acrobat-nobility, the First Circus is the only remaining institution still surviving from the days of the Biter of Fists.

The First Circus can be found on the eastern half of the main island, amid the rolling hills and orange clay.  The vineyards there produce a rich variety of the fruit brandies that Nalta is best known for.  The most famous liquor produced there is called looskay (rhymes with "moose bay") and is known the world over.

Lady Delfeen and her acrobat-elite dwell in Galnepal, a town of terraces and grape presses.  She controls the Nine Acre Chariot which is usually used to carry all of the produce back from distant orchards in a single trip.  However, the Nine Acre Chariot is more famous on the sea, where it is one of the biggest warships in the world.  It resembles a barge the size of a building being towed by a pair of even bigger ferris wheels (packed with laborers, who run up the sides of the wheels like hamsters in a wheel), not unlike a chariot being pulled by two revolving horses.

Bitefist Bay

The closest thing to a neutral zone on Nalta is the portside town known as Bitefist Bay.  You'll see an intersection of marinel from the hills, darklanders from the swamp, and all manner of travelers and traders.  (Agents of the gillmen also frequent the town, although you won't find gillmen there in person.)

Technically, everyone on Nalta works on a plantation, so Bitefist Bay constitutes its own plantation.  If a resident of Nalta wants to declare themselves to be neutral, they'll claim allegiance to Bitefist Bay.

Neighborhoods will be divided up according to allegiances (although this won't be obvious to outsiders) and outsiders will be pressured to take sides. Adventurers will be hired to attack, sabotage, and distract the rival plantations.  Plausible deniability and all that.

You won't find nobility here (No Lasher Dandies or Mango Ladies), but you'll meet lots of associated personalities.  The taverns serve the local alcohols in tin cups, and hunting and fishing  are both enormously popular diversions. The town square contains a fifty foot long grill that they use to fry a single pelagic otterworm, on the rare occasions when one is caught. (Everyone loves an impromptu otterworm festival, and if you ever want to broker peace on Nalta, it'll help if you show up with an otterworm.)

The Mayor is a woman named Beatrina Lamonsiq. She is a cripple, and rolls around in a wheelchair, a blanket in her lap, a strong drink in her hand, and a twinkle in her eye. She is popular because of her powerful dedication to protecting Bitefist locals. Her son, Abergrand Lamonsiq, sells cigars and is in charge of appraisng newcomers and keeping her informed.

Another notable person is Glipkerian Mosok, who committed a heinous crime in his youth and was punished for it. Originally, he was to be put in the stocks in the marketplace until death, but people brought him food and he lived for months. Eventually, his sentence was commuted to merely having his feet put into the stocks. That was twenty years ago. Now, Glipkerian occupies a rounded booth in the center of the square, where he operates his "Shop of Useful Items". He has never strayed from where he is anchored, and his body has grown round and fat, and now snugly conforms to the dimensions of his shop-prison. No one has seen his feet in years, and they are the subject of many rumors.

Nalta

I don't think Nalta will play much of a part in a Land of Flowers game, but whatever.





Nalta and the Glimmering Isles



Seven Years Upon The Fish



The greatest ocean in the world is the Sea of Fish, and the men who sail upon are the greatest of sailors.



The Sea of Fish is sometimes also called the "Fishy Blue" or sometimes just the "Fish".  A sailor might say something like, "aye, I spent seven years upon the Fish, an watched her swallow me mates and me son, though I still love her, I do".



It is said that the gillmen call it the "Sea of Apes" because of all the humans sailing on it.


In the southwestern quadrant of the Fish (known as a mild and playful expanse, with entire stretches of emerald-green water blanketed by sea-lilies and lumber-flies) you will find the island of Nalta.  It has a smaller, companion island called Namboora.  Between them and to the north are the Glimmering Isles and the Megara Reefs, which were believed to be cursed for a long time (because of all the ships that disappeared while sailing between them).



It wasn't until the Three Carpenters Who Became Kings sailed through the Megara Reefs in their horizon-fetcher (picture an giant outrigger canoe crossed with a galleon, with two main decks and a canvas tent above that) that they discovered that it was home to a large city of gillmen.



The Three Carpenters Who Became Kings helped settle the island and died their first deaths, just in time for the Naltese islands to be conquered by the empire Cheox.  After a generation, Nalta had been transformed into a land of huge plantations and orchards.  Most of their produce went to feed Cheox.  When Cheox fell (within a few decades of conquering Nalta), the liberated citizens tore down the statues, but set up their own government in imitation of the one they had just escaped.



A Tedious History of Violence



In the years that followed, Nalta attempted to establish itself as a kingdom of plantations.  But Nalta is a desirable prize, with fertile lands and beautiful beaches.  Various forces struggled for that narrow island, and the history since then has been clotted with warlords and plantation kings, with dynasties springing up and falling sometimes in the space of a single season.  We'll skip all that tedious history then, except for one warlord, named Tora-torog, The Biter of Fists.



Tora-torog was the only warlord to unite all of the islands.  He was a Zyrolean marinel (monkey-tailed sailor dude) from the Changoor dynasty.  It is said that in the Battle of Angry Faces (which united all of Nalta) the fatalities were so high that the rivers ran red with blood.  They also say that before the Battle of Burning Tongues bananas were a sickly yellow, rather than the pleasing red they are today.  The sundry bones of those buried beneath the orchards nourishes and sustains those great fruits.



Almost immediately after conquering Nalta, Tora-torog, The Biter of Fists began to go powerfully insane.



Many strange aspects of Nalta can be attributed to Tora-Torog.  He built an enormous series of dikes and earthworks called the Serpentsgrip Hills, ostensibly to keep his "life essence" from washing away from him (possibly referring to his semen).  He built the Secret Beds of Dogs as a series of tombs for his beloved "dogs", hid the entrances, and killed all of the builders that didn't want to build another tomb for one of this "dogs".  The Secret Beds are sized for dogs (no hallway is higher than 5') and all of the known ones have been looted.  Tora-torog's definition of a dog was a loose one, and the Secret Beds hold humans, fish, horses, and even a few richly clothed rocks that Tora-Torog thought resembled dogs.  But what Tora-Torog is most known for is the House of All Gods.






The House of All Gods



Tora-Torog was a follower of Furo, the marinel religion that has been described as the pinnacle of pan-inclusive idolatry.  The Followers of Furo believe that the world is full of numerous small gods that physically reside in their idols, which they trade like mercantile commodities.  However, Furo believes that all gods are part of the Furo omni-pantheon, even those of other religions (which is why they consider all temples to be their temples, and even a great deal of things that aren't temples).



Anyway, Tora-Torog decided that he would build a mansion for the gods to live in when they wearied of living in their idols.  By following their instructions, no matter how nonsensical, he would build the ultimate vehicle of divine accomodation--a precursor to heaven on earth.



The House of All Gods resembles a city, if all of the buildings were taken from disparate parts of the world and them smashed together so that there are no streets.  (This is not an exaggeration.  In at least one instance The Biter of Fists paid a clan of pirates an exorbitant fee to steal the Tower of Yen from the monks who venerated it, and install it in the center of the House of All Gods.)  There's even a few ships assimilated into its mass.



In fact, much of the construction seems impossible: buildings attached  upside down, a heavy stone cairns stacked atop a wooden hunting lodge (complete with trophies), and even a 300' bridge that appears to stuck into the ground sideways without bending or falling.  The common consensus is that Tora-Torog, despite his  madness, actually received assistance from the gods.  



So, at least in this respect, Tora-Torog was not just a madman (there are those who believe he was the sanest man who ever lived), and if this is true, then the Biter of Fists succeeded in his goal, and the House of All Gods is a literal incarnation of the gods' realm, as well as a preview of the (apparently incomprehensible) afterlife that we will all one day experience.



One sweltering summer day, Tora-torog was indulging in an eating contest among his closest friends and family (he was a champion eater) when he attempted to eat a vast mouthful of baby octopi, who clung to the inside of his throat and choked him.  His brothers promptly hoisted the cutlery and declared war on each other.  Within a week, the islands were plunged back into war, and men no longer eat more than one baby octopus at a time unless they wish to tempt fate.



The Three Plantations



The Three Great Plantations of Nalta are more like small city-states that organize themselves according to the old lines of indentured servitude and slavery that were common in the Cheoxian era.  For example, the nobles eschew traditional titles, and instead are known as Taskmasters, Lasher, and Master of Plums, even though those titles have lost much of their original meaning, although the Lashers still carry whips (often bejeweled) at the side of their impeccable, white, tailored suits.



To use modern terminology, Nalta is a failed state.  The islands are technically in a state of perpetual war, but the actual experience is better described as an extremely tenuous peace characterized by willful ignorance.



Walking across the countryside, it is not uncommon to find a group of soldiers from one plantation drinking iced mango juice beneath a sprawling banyan and then, just over the next hill, a group of soldiers from a different plantation-city will be playing a lively game of lawn darts, while prostitutes hang off their arms.  If you attempt to alert either group to the existence of the other, they will grow unfriendly and accuse you of lies.



Although the people of Nalta are varied, they have grown tired of generations of war, and most would rather ignore each other than engage in open warfare.  This attitude does not extend to the upper echelons, and the leadership of each plantation hates each other with a contemptuous rage.  Given the opportunity, they would rather attack the other plantations.  However, when the orders are given to march on the enemy, the armies conspire with each other, and elaborate marches lose themselves in the hillocks and orchards, and in the end, each army is miraculously unable to locate the other.  About half of all military campaigns end with each army drinking punch with their distant relatives, or a skinny dipping on some white sand beach.



The other half of all military campaigns end in battles, retreat, flanking maneuvers, and many young men dying in banana groves.  Because it is not all empty posturing, and not everyone prays for peace.



The closest thing to a neutral ground is Bitefist Bay, which occupies a central location on the main island.  The cognitive dissonance is even stronger here, and you may even find opposing soldiers walking past each other on the same street, each doing their very best to pretend the other one isn't there.  Skirmishes are very rare in Bitefist Bay, because the whole islands depends on the commerce that moves through it.  Nalta is not self-sufficient, and relies on trade for clothing, iron, and other finished products.



There are three big plantation cities, each controlled by a different group in a different area, and each is known for a different type of liquor.  They compete for control of the islands but especially for the House of All Gods (which is the same thing).


Vast and subtle enchantments were wrought that persist to this day. In the forests, the trees grow in straight rows, and small birds will explode in a shower of feathers if someone pantomimes shooting them with a bow (much to the delight of children).







Papa Temnoc and the Golden Claw



The gillmen are some of the first inhabitants of Nalta, and they have since returned in force to claim it.  There is a savage clan of red gillmen living in the Glimmering Isles and the Megara Reefs, who call themselves the Golden Claw.  Their leader is called Papa Temnoc, who is a gigantic (7') tall gillman who has had one of his hands replaced with a golden claw after losing it in battle.



The Golden Claw Clan is also known to use a great number of enslaved crab men for battle and labor.  Crab men are as big as ogres and covered in armor.  Their crabs are drugged with opiates and painted (both fearsome patterns and vulgar graffiti) and then ridden into battle.  You've never really lived until you've been killed by a giant crab covered in neon pornography.



Digression: Gillmen are basically merfolk with legs.  Gills are basically semi-external lungs that rely on a large surface area for gas exchange.  So basically, they look like pale green-blue humans with holes cut out between all of their ribs.  Like, you could poke a stick beween between their ribs and almost poke their spine.  Human lungs are filled with alveoli; but gillmen ribs are filled with what appear to be bushy masses of red filaments, which are visible between their lungs.  See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mneDhOtVEQw.



Another Digression: Although gillmen can breathe water and swim like fish, the fastest way to travel across the ocean is still by boat.  These are strange, fusiform things, with most of the ship's mass beneath the water and the sails sticking out above the water.  Sort of like footballs/tuna with a bad infestation of canvas.



Papa Temnoc dreams of capturing the House of All Gods, flooding it, and filling with schools of small, tasty fish.  The Golden Claw is known for producing a type of alcohol called salavoka, which is made from the gas-filled bladders of a type of succulent kelp.  Salavoka is a dark black liquid that is usually diluted before drinking, when it turns a sort of rich yellow color.  It is sold and served from small wooden barrels, each of which is packaged with a single sea urchin (meant to guarantee purity, since the urchin will rot if the alcohol content is not high enough.  Salavoka is traditionally consumed from hollowed out urchins.  After the barrel is finished, the urchin is either carefully eaten or thrown hard against something wooden, where it sticks.



Mad King Ketch and the Darklanders

On the west side of the main island, you'll find settlements filled with Darklanders, exiled from their homeland twenty years ago.  They are led by a man called Mad King Ketch, who has two wives, and two daughters with each one.  Although he controls farms and orchards, he lives in the small swamp there, which is called the Brackenwald. 

Within the Brackenwald, he resides aboard the remains of the Ship of Fools, the same vessel that carried him here from the Darklands.  The Ship of Fools was filled with the cast-offs of society: madmen, criminals, and blunderers.  Although the Ship of Fools is no longer seaworthy, it is still most definitely swampworthy.  You may occasionally see it being towed around the swamp by teams of ragged crocodile-men and wild-eyed darklanders.  It was a big, flat-bottomed scow before it was marooned in the swamp.  Now screech owls nest in the portholes and moss throttles the figurehead (a horse).  Black swamp-wolves climb up the netting and sleep beside the lepers. The masts have all been broken apart, and made into totem poles that decorate the swamp. This is where Mad King Ketch holds court.

The Darklanders have been joined by a great number of lepers and runaways since then, building their own village of lost souls.  And although they are still called "the darklanders", the ash-skinned northerners actually make up a minority of the group.  Some of them can't even speak darkentongue, and most of them can see see colors.

Mad King Ketch exports black rum.  ("The blacker the tongue, the warmer the sun.")  It is made from the sweet fruit of enormous swamp ferns.  The black color comes from caramelized fern-fruit and a period of aging in charred barrels.

It is said that Mad King Ketch's two daughters are brine witches, as are his two wives, as are his two mothers-in-law.  The Ship of Fools is guarded at all times by Oshi-Oto, the Worm-Dragon, a dragon, although he is barely recognizable as one now.  In his youth, a flesh-eating disease robbed him of his arms, legs, eyes, and scales.  The only respite the mad, crippled dragon has is in black rum, which he insists keeps his disease at bay and drinks by the gallon.

Lady Dalfeen and the First Circus

Tora-torag was a scion of the Changoor dynasty, and that proud tradition is continued today in the First Circus.  Led by Lady Dalfeen and her acrobat-nobility, the First Circus is the only remaining institution still surviving from the days of the Biter of Fists.

The First Circus can be found on the eastern half of the main island, amid the rolling hills and orange clay.  The vineyards there produce a rich variety of the fruit brandies that Nalta is best known for.  The most famous liquor produced there is called looskay (rhymes with "moose bay") and is known the world over.

Lady Delfeen and her acrobat-elite dwell in Rukya, a town of terraces and grape presses.  She controls the Nine Acre Chariot which is usually used to carry all of the produce back from distant orchards in a single trip.  However, the Nine Acre Chariot is more famous on the sea, where it is one of the biggest warships in the world.  It resembles a barge the size of a building being towed by a pair of even bigger ferris wheels (packed with laborers, who run up the sides of the wheels like hamsters in a wheel), not unlike a chariot being pulled by two revolving horses.

Bitefist Bay

The closest thing to a neutral zone on Nalta is the portside town known as Bitefist Bay.  You'll see an intersection of marinel from the hills, darklanders from the swamp, and all manner of travelers and traders.  (Agents of the gillmen also frequent the town, although you won't find gillmen there in person.)

Technically, everyone on Nalta works on a plantation, so Bitefist Bay constitutes its own plantation.  If a resident of Nalta wants to declare themselves to be neutral, they'll claim allegiance to Bitefist Bay.

Neighborhoods will be divided up according to allegiances (although this won't be obvious to outsiders) and outsiders will be pressured to take sides. Adventurers will be hired to attack, sabotage, and distract the rival plantations.  Plausible deniability and all that.

You won't find nobility here (No Lasher Dandies or Mango Ladies), but you'll meet lots of associated personalities.  The taverns serve the local alcohols in tin cups, and hunting and fishing  are both enormously popular diversions. The town square contains a fifty foot long grill that they use to fry a single pelagic otterworm, on the rare occasions when one is caught. (Everyone loves an impromptu otterworm festival, and if you ever want to broker peace on Nalta, it'll help if you show up with an otterworm.)

The Mayor is a woman named Beatrina Lamonsiq. She is a cripple, and rolls around in a wheelchair, a blanket in her lap, a strong drink in her hand, and a twinkle in her eye. She is popular because of her powerful dedication to protecting Bitefist locals. Her son, Abergrand Lamonsiq, sells cigars and is in charge of appraisng newcomers and keeping her informed.

Another notable person is Glipkerian Mosok, who committed a heinous crime in his youth and was punished for it. Originally, he was to be put in the stocks in the marketplace until death, but people brought him food and he lived for months. Eventually, his sentence was commuted to merely having his feet put into the stocks. That was twenty years ago. Now, Glipkerian occupies a rounded booth in the center of the square, where he operates his "Shop of Useful Items". He has never strayed from where he is anchored, and his body has grown round and fat, and now snugly conforms to the dimensions of his shop-prison. No one has seen his feet in years, and they are the subject of many rumors.

At first, Professor Bradley Quatermain thought he was
talking to the Lord.



In 1896, the Professor was dynamiting bentonitic mudstone in
Wyoming.  After the dust and noise had
cleared, he tramped down the hillside to see what had been unearthed by the
explosion.  He found ceratopsid tracks, a
single fossilized tooth, and a message carved into 60-million year old
stone.  The message addressed him by
name, and described where he should dig next.



His wife, Minnie, declared the slab to be a hoax.  The professor declared it to be a sign of
divine intervention, and gave thanks to the Lord, although he only half
believed it himself.  Terrified and
optimistic, they drank their only bottle of wine. They pushed their sleeping bags together, and ruined each other's sleep with happy conversation that lasted almost until dawn.



The second dig revealed another message.  And then a dozen more.  They were all a set of instructions.  The slabs instructed Professor Quatermain to
take all 14 slabs with him back to the American Museum of Natural History.  The slabs mentioned where land might be found
that had a large amount of oil beneath it. 
The slabs also mentioned where to dig next year, in order to receive
more messages.  The last slab mentioned
the need for secrecy, in crude, scratched letters.



“Praise God,” said Professor Bradley, as he carted the slabs
off to New York.




Next year brought Quatermain back to Wyoming with a quartet
of skeptical scientists and as many graduate students.  The fact that Quatermain had made a fortune
in oil speculation did little to allay their doubts.


By following instructions, the second dig team unearthed
thirteen more tablets.  They also unearthed
the author.



In a pillar of mudstone, the archaeologists exposed what they
at first thought was an external cast of a therapod foot.  But as they unearthed more of it, they
realized two things.  (1) The creature was
badly deformed.  One man joked that it
looked like elephantiasis of a tyrannosaur. 
And then they realized (2) it wasn't a fossil, but a mummy.



The tablets ordered the scientists to return to the Museum
of Natural History with the tablets, mummy, and instructions for next year’s
dig.  It also gave instructions for
another oil field and made predictions about how the dinosaur mummy would be received
in New York.  The predictions were
completely accurate.


They tried analyzing the mummy as well. They determined that it was a male, but got contradictory results when they tried to figure out how old it was.



The third year’s group excavated more tablets, but these
were numbered, and came with the stern restriction that they must not be read
unless they had a question to ask the author, in which case they could turn
over the next stone and read it.



And that’s how it went, for at least a few years.  The slabs predicted all sorts of things:
stock market crashes, gold mines, lotto numbers, and the people who threatened
to expose the Museum of Natural History. 
Not that they were breaking any laws. 
It’s just that it would be a lot of trouble to explain.


They mounted the mutant Tyrannosaur mummy in the center of the
lobby.  They gave it all sorts of
names.  Tyrannoscribus rex.  Our Cretaceous Benefactor.  Caesar.  The dinosaur certainly never gave himself a name.





In the years that followed, the Museum of Natural History became a financial and scientific powerhouse.  They seemed to be prepared for everything that came their way, seemed to have no problem debunking their critics’ assertions, and even explained away the missing persons reports.  They made a lot of money by selling gold mines that discovered by their new surveying techniques.  "We have developed a new method to predict the location of gold mines based on geologic analysis," said the president of the Museum.  "You'll understand, of course, why are leery of disclosing the exact methodology to the public."


Every year, they go out and dig up another set of
tablets.  Caesar’s advice didn't help
them much in their research, but the dead dinosaur’s writings have been
invaluable in stealing other researcher’s work before it was published.



Because Caesar can see things.  Through time and space, the creature’s bloodshot eyeballs float around the world, incorporeal and persistent.  The eyes move through walls and see inside
pockets.  They fly backwards and forwards
in time.  



Most of the men of the Museum
of Natural History have developed an intense paranoia.  They feel like they are being watched by a creature that was buried 60 million years
ago.  Because they are.  Even at home.  Even under the sheets. Over coffee, they joke that the tyrannosaur mummy in the lobby is till alive. All of the staff wish the mummy good night when they leave at the end of the day, perhaps with an uncanny amount of respect. 

They rightly suspect that if they ever go to the press, or in any
way compromise the ambitions of the dinosaur or the institution, Ceasar alerts
the museum president, Morris K. Jesup, who sees to it that the offending
individual is taken care of.




They disappear before they are ever a problem.  Sometimes they're never hired in the first place.  Sometimes they're killed.  A week before, a month before, a year. . . Caesar’s eyes
wander through time. So do his solutions.



If one of the scientists wants to ask a question of Caesar,
they stand before the mummified dinosaur in the lobby and voices it aloud.  (“Is my wife cheating on me?” or maybe “Did
parasaurolophus vocalize through its crest?”) 
Caesar alerts President Jesup through a pre-arranged tablet reading, who
then writes the reply himself, signs it with an X, and then sends it to the
petitioner.



Some of them find religious inspiration in
it.  Some of the staff find this creepy.  "Don't worry," President Jesup reassures them.  "Everything is under our control.  Worst case scenario, we throw all the tablets in the Hudson river and buy everyone cars.  How would you like a Ford?"



President Jesup would never throw the tablets in the Hudson.  He has ambitious, too. 



If any of them are a little bit
worried about what will happen when Caesar’s plan is realized, they’re too
smart to say anything.  Because Caesar’s not doing this for free.  He’s purchasing his resurrection.





It’s not as impossible as it seems.  He’s already been resurrected once
before, in 1712.  Not everything went according to plan, and he remained entombed.  He was only alive for a few seconds before he was crushed and suffocated. 
Trapped so far beneath the surface in an anoxic environment, his body quickly mummified.



He achieved his first resurrection with the help of hundreds
of Arapaho and Shoshone shamans. 
They failed to get him out of the ground before reviving him, but it
was still usefull, since it taught him how the magic could work.



Now, his partnership with the Museum of Natural History has
allowed him to begin the process again. 
It's not a simple endeavor.  It
will take time, resources, and magic. 
But Caesar watches over his own corpse from across 60 million years,
ignoring the hunger in his belly and the pains in his warped bones. 



He’s in a hurry.  How
long does a tyrannosaur live?  He doesn’t
know.  He can’t look into his own future
because as soon as he observes it, his plans change and therefore his future.  Looking into his own future is like stepping
into a seizure.  It's like vomiting strobe lights. Fractal déjà vu.







And so he squats in the mud by the riverside, painstakingly
writing messages in the mud while thousands of insects alight on
his eyelashes and parasites crawl over his body. 
At night, he sleeps fitfully, dreaming of the distant future, of his
rebirth, and of the end of time.  His
body is malformed.  It hurts to
breath.  He has never known a mate.  He has, since reaching adulthood, been too
sick to hunt anything, and his breath reeks of carrion.  He is misses the hunts, misses the crunch and
the warm snout.  Whatever gave him intelligence and magic also gave him a crippling deformity, and he is convinced he got the lousy side of the trade. 



His life is slipping
away.  Every time he goes to sleep it
feels like dying.  His emotions are too alien to describe in human terms, but
it is fair to say that he is not a happy dinosaur.





And so he dreams of the future and writes messages to the mammals
he sees in his dreams.  He wonders if he
has gone mad.  Is it all in his head?  He knows arithmetic and the subways of New
York.  He can understand five
languages.  He has even tried to speak
French to a hadrosaur once, poorly.  But what if there's no such thing as time?  What if there will never be a president Woodrow Wilson?  What if these are the products of a malformed mind, a soul that is as twisted as the body it inhabits?



Quickly, before death, the dinosaur must finish this
work.  He is racing against his personal
extinction in the Cretaceous, just as the humans are racing against their
extinction in 1950 (he knows—he’s looked ahead).  His warped spine grows more warped from
bending over muddy river banks.  He roars
impotently when alamosaurs trample his careful inscriptions.





He doesn’t care about humans.  Brotherhood is a completely foreign concept to
him.  Pity is just a two-syllable noise
that humans make.  And so, when he dreams
of a human who makes his plan more difficult, he just writes a note addressed
to Jesup a week earlier in 1929 and asks that they be killed.  The next night, he dreams of a dead curator and
a future that seems more on track for his resurrection.



Once he requested that a dead man be taken to the lobby and placed in the mouth
of his mummy.  Jesup leapt to obey.  Across 60 million years, the dinosaur looked
at the dead mammal laying in his corpse’s mouth and mused: “Corpses eating
corpses”.  He thought that was an interesting
thought—the closest thing he’s ever known to humor—and wrote it on a couple of
tablets for other humans to read.  It’s
the only thing he’s ever wanted to express for its own sake. 



 “Corpses eating corpses.”



Sometimes, though, causality bites him in the ass.  He’ll write a set of tablets over the course
of a month, and then something in those tablets causes something bad to happen
at the end of 1929, and so he’ll have to erase those tablets and go back.  It works both ways, too.  Sometimes he’ll change A in the future, and
this will cause him to change B in the past, which will cause something to
damage one of the tablets that causes A in the first place, and the whole set
of it is ruined.  Sometimes this happens for
reasons that he can’t figure out.  He’s
had to throw away most of 1928 once.  And
then, when he redid it, he had to redo the winter of 1928 another time because
of some paradox he didn't catch in time. 
His frustration is immense, and he has no one to vent to except the fucking mammals.



He doesn't always get his way.  Once he museum was vandalized, and he was
asked why he didn't prevent the vandalism in the first place.  Too much work.  Too many fragile threads that he has to weave together.  And causality has such sharp edges.



When he doesn't dream of 1929, he sometimes dreams of
hunting paradoxes through Cretaceous bayous and happily choking on their blood.







Morris Ketchum Jesup is too rich for work a nine-to-five.  He sometimes runs with J. P. Morgan and
Rockefeller, after all.  But when he is
at work, you’ll find him behind an immense red oak desk, covered with all the interesting
stuff that you might find on the desk of the President of the American Museum
of Natural History.  He probably sent for
you because Caesar asked for you by name. 
He’ll probably want you to retrieve a totem pole or hair from a Salem witch or some other black magic thing. 
(Jesup is fascinated by the concept of black magic.  He intends to write a book.)





If Caesar thinks that you’ll be more likely to succeed if
told the truth (and he’s always right about these things), you’ll be told the
abridged secret of the mummified dinosaur in the lobby.  If you want to ask any questions of Caesar,
you may ask them now.  Jesup will just
smile and flip over the stone tablet that has been sitting on the table during
this whole conversation, revealing the answer to your question.



(If your players are joking, OOC, that their PCs should ask
Caesar “What have I got in my pocket?” or some other cutesy stuff, it’s
perfectly acceptable to put answers on the tablet in response to questions that
the PCs never asked in the first place, as long as they are questions that are
likely to be asked, or at least discussed on the way home from the museum.  Caesar can see the questions you ask in at
least two potential futures (with and without reading his tablet) and so he
uses this ability to appear as if he’s reading your mind (although he
cannot).  He can however, see inside your
pocket quite easily.



And after you head off to Massachusetts to dig up the bodies
of the Salem witches, don’t think for a second that your success is guaranteed
just because your employer can see the future. 
If he sends you off to Massachusetts and sees that you will eventually
die a horrible death there, it’s usually just easier to send another group than
it is to rewrite history.



That’s one way to use him in your game.  Here’s another.



If you find yourself working against Caesar and the
unscrupulous scientists of the Museum of Natural History, I hope you know what
you’re getting yourself into.  Expect
every move to be anticipated.  But be
aware that the museum might send people to kill you before you interfere with
their plans.   They might try to
assassinate you before you even plan to interfere with their plans.  This means that, from the moment the Museum
of Natural History is introduced as a possible plot in your campaign,
assassination becomes a possible thing as well. 




After you steal that meteorite from the museum, be aware
that they already know where you’re going. 
You could get straight on a plane and drive on a random path through the
countryside for a couple of months.  It’s
very inconvenient to Caesar, who has to watch your car every day to figure out
where you are going.  He’s old and almost
dead.  He might just decide that you aren't
worth his time, tell Jesup to put a more traditional bounty on your head, and
get back to business.



You can outfight him, too. 
Once you beat a couple of his eventualities, Caesar will be so caught up
in paradoxes and rewrites that it’ll take him a month (of his time) to sort out
his mud-scratches.  Do enough unexpected
things, change your plans often, react to the changes that Caesar has made, and you’ll be able to defeat the museum.  



Although, they can throw just about anything at you.  They don’t have an armed militia or an
enclave of wizards, but they do have a lot of money (Jesup) and a lot of weird shit
with spooky powers (that the Museum has collected on Caesar’s behalf.)







In the cold tonnage of the dinosaur’s brain, there are also
nightmares.  He dreams of waking up,
entombed beneath the earth, of blackness, and of crushing suffocation.  He dreams of these things because he knows that
they will happen to him in 1712, when the Native Americans resurrect him inside
his stone grave.  He’s watched it happen
dozens of times, and is not looking forward to it.



The days are filled with biting flies and
limping through mud.  The nights are
filled with tedious observation of hairless mammals and their complicated little world.  He can’t see a future where he is fully resurrected yet, but that is
slowly changing.  And when he is feeling
optimistic, he goes back to the October of 1926 to watch the janitors haul the
corpse up a ladder and place it in his mummy’s mouth.  These mammals look so easy to hunt, even a
crippled dinosaur could manage it.  Only
this thought lets him sleep peacefully.

After His Burial And Before His Death

Part of my plan to flesh out Centerra, the setting for the Land of Flowers.  I can't show you the dungeons, but I can show you a few of the more relevant places around the Sea of Fish.



Brynth, the Land of Doglaw Nakedsword:





Brynth, and capitol city of Patra





History



While Noth is trying to set itself up as an empire, Brynth has already been there.  They were formerly one of the capitols of Cheox, the greatest empire the world has ever known.  The Cheoxan Empire were a bunch of assholes and slavers, and when a literal army of afner (halfling) assassins killed them all in the Eight Hour War, not a single fuck was given.



The Cheoxan Empire crumbled, except for Brynth.  This is where they fled, all the leaders and retreating armies of the Empire.  A bit like Nazis fleeing justice after the war, ashamed and universally reviled.  Over the next forty years, pretty much every country in the world took a turn trying to conquer Brynth, and they all failed.





That was a little less than a hundred years ago.  The slavers, despots, and generals have cooled down a lot since then, and the world is cool with them.  More or less.



Afner (halflings) hate Brynth, as they suffered the most under the Empire and the wars that followed.  Decades after Cheox fell, elite halfling soldiers were still sneaking into Brynth and kidnapping the former Cheox leadership.  These old men were stuffed into boats, sailed back to halfling-controlled lands, where there were given an long public trial and then invariably executed.



Plus, modern Brynth is always meddling in foreign affairs.  They can do this because (1) they're still dicks, politically, and (2) they're pretty badass.  Despite being one of the smallest countries (Noth is more than ten times bigger, in land and population) they have the third-biggest army in the world. 



Military



This is possible because Brynth has a rather draconian "army first" philosophy, called The Law of Iron. This means that the military is always the first priority in all considerations.  This has lead to some friction with the farmers, and more than a couple of minor famines.  There is no idle nobility or decadent kings in Brynth.  There are idle admirals and decadent generals, but at least they usually carry a saber and sport a crew-cut.



Sickly or deformed babies are taken to the Church, and with the preacher apologizing to Heaven for the paltry sacrifice, the infant is strangled.  Everyone serves at least 4 years in the army, and many stay for more, since the military is both the only means for advancement and the biggest social club in town. 



Remember that every merchant you meet there is ex-military, and even the old wino in the alleyway has probably got a couple of kills under his belt.  Everyone carries weapons, even the children, most commonly a handaxe or shortsword.  Brynthans will tell you that this is why their country is the safest in the world.  It's true, the crime rate is awfully low, but that has as much to do with their legal system (see below).







Warfare



Internationally, Brynth is known for fighting "naked wars".  That's sort of an exaggeration.  When an organized skirmish is fought between two Brynthic forces, they two sides sometimes strip down, paint themselves two different colors, and then charge into battle with only a short sword (in a scabbard), round shield, and a spear.  The rationale is that this will equalize the effect of wealth (no expensive armor), allow more skilled fighters to triumph over lucky ones (disputable), reduce the number of wounded (technically true, since more wounds are fatal), and wrap up this messy rebellion sooner (true).



These naked skirmishes don't happen often, and high-ranking officers rarely take part in them (it's a young man's game), but they're part of the Brynthic stereotype.  Plus, they make for some great artwork.  A vista of bloodied dead, blue corpses piled in among the green ones, while in the foreground two heroes circle each other with spears.  



You'll see this reflected in their public art, too.  Brythans are fond of statues of muscular, naked warriors.  You'll see them on street corners.  But even the statue was originally made of pristine white marble, they'll have painted it some bright color.  Bright crimson or electric yellow, oftentimes in patterns.



If the statue is of someone who is-or-will-become a general or admiral, they'll be depicted with a erection of a truly imperial caliber.  It's a cultural thing.  I won't go into it.







Pets



You won't go far in Patra before you see your first Brynthic Hound.  These are huge dogs, the size of Great Danes, usually wearing armor, even if it is just a helmet and neck-guard.  They are military killing machines with immaculate pedigree and training, but unlike other military killing machines with immaculate pedigree and training, these dogs are immortal.



Well, conditionally immortal.  They need a certain type of tea every morning, or else they sicken quickly and die.  This tea is made from the ceruz plant, and is commonly called by the same name.  And of course, if you stab the dog in the heart, it will die, it's just that stabbing an armored warhound that's fought in 100 years of wars is a very daunting prospect.



These dogs are produced by the wizards of the Titansblood Academy.  They accept a bunch of puppies every year, and after a year is about, a tiny fraction of the ceruzar (that's the breed) will be paraded as new Brynthic Warhounds (that's the immortal kind).  Failure dogs are returned to their households, where they are loved significantly less than the immortal Hounds.  The process probably doesn't work on people, or else we'd see immortal Brynthic Warlords, right?



The dogs are passed down through families like heirlooms, although they are sometimes pawned if the family falls on hard times.  Although their owners will tell you differently, they aren't any smarter than normal dogs.  They are powerful leapers that can kill a dozen armed men, but they also are fantastically loyal.  They're even known for visiting their masters' graves.  Go to a Brynthic graveyard, and you'll see several unattended killing machines laying in front of their last eight masters' graves, or howling together in lonesome synchronicity.



Immortality is lonely for a dog.



Perhaps for this reason, they love children.  You'd be hard pressed to convince a Warhound to attack a child.  Maybe this is because they're only ever trained to kill soldiers, but perhaps it is part of their nature, too.  It's not uncommon to see the dogs walking around the city, wearing a necklace of flowers that a child made for it, or to see the Lieutenant's daughter riding it while giggling.  For a dog that can wear fifty pounds of armor while running down archers, a four-year-old weighs nothing at all.







Culture



Brynth is both powerfully sexist and powerfully egalitarian at the same time.  If your hair is short, you're a man, no matter what's between your legs.  If your hair is long, you're a woman.  End of story.



They know that this doesn't hold true in other countries, but show a heterosexual Brynthic man a beautiful woman with short hair and he'll struggle with arousal.  Same for all genders.



Of course being a "man with short hair" doesn't automatically equate to respect.  Until you've killed a few people, you'll be treated dismissively and with derision.  "Women with long hair" have it even worse, disqualifying them from promotions (and voting).  At best, they're treated like children.  It's so bad that foreign women almost unanimously cut their hair short when visiting Brynth.



Homosexuality is totally fine, as long as the couple doesn't have the same haircut.  Then it's gross.



Every family has a war shrine.  Usually located in the dining room, this will be a small altar to Hesaya that doubles as a display case.  Traditionally, every weapon or item on represents another kill, made by some member or ancestor.



If you want to get a present for a Brynthian, buy them a nice sword.  I'm seriously.  Even if you're just trying to get into their pants.  A gift of a well-oiled, brand new sword is like intoxication for Brynthians.  For this reason, well-oiled, brand new swords sell for a bit more than in other places.  Shields and spears are also extremely appreciated, but the short sword is most traditional.



Without exception, they are vegetarians.  They usually drink in moderation, and almost none of them smoke.  They believe in all of that "healthy body, healthy mind" stuff.  For this reason, fat people and skinny people are treated suspiciously.  What kind of shady lifestyle are you part of that doesn't let you put on any honest muscle?



Brynthans are fond of three sports, which they practice at any opportunity.  Footraces, wrestling, and bird-kicking.  The bird is a wooden model that is tied to the ceiling by a string.  7' off the ground, 8' off the ground, 9' off the ground. . . Brynthians are great jumpers.  The game is even more fun after a few skins of wine.



It is not at all considered strange or homosexual for a man to invite his friend over for dinner and a wrestling match.  (Maybe you'll get to experience this after you make a gift of a sword.  The Freudian implications alone are staggering.)



Brynthic music sucks.  Everyone says so, even in Brynth.



Although everyone joins the military, you'll only be sent to the front lines if you have children to carry on your name.  So if a Brynthian asks you if you have any children, she's really asking something else.  If you say "no", she'll grunt and nod.  It doesn't mean you're a coward, it just means she's not ruling it out.



Only one piece of jewelry is ever worn by Brynthians: torcs.  The heavier the better.  They're worn a semi-permanent basis, and they're only ever worn by civilians.  So when the melee breaks out, you stand a better chance of looking like a civilian if you're wearing a torc.



Brynth has a few truly gargantuan lighthouses, which are public property and have equally huge gardens built around them, some of which are better described as "small forests full of statues".









Law



Technically, the Grand Commander and Ultimate Admiral lead the nation, leading to a great deal of. . . let's call it rivalry. . . between the army and the navy (in some places they behave like rival gangs).  But since it's easy to get something put to a popular vote (that can override these two men) their law is not supreme.



Brynth is among the most democratic countries in the world.  Every officer gets a vote, from corporal on up.  Since officers are expected to be from the same neighborhood as his men, this usually translates into a halfway decent form of representation.



Companies that don't like their commanding officer can petition to have him removed.  These petitions usually go through.  If the petition fails, they can vote to begin volunteering for more dangerous missions, possibly even suicide missions (there are laws in place that enable this).  The commanding officer usually gets the hint.



Brynth is also known the world over as having great logical minds and legal processes.  When two countries broker an armistice, they have a Brynthic diplomat on hand as a consultant and witness.  When great merchant houses make their biggest negotiations, the paper that they sign was written by a Brynthic notary.













Let's talk about lawyers.



In Brynth, there's only one punishment for serious crimes, trial by combat.



Of course, first they have a normal trial first.  The judge hears the arguments (there is no jury) and decides on the terms of the combat.  If the accused is obviously a murderer, then he begins the combat bound hand and foot.  So the combat effectively becomes an execution. If two brothers both want the entire inheritance and are unwilling to compromise, they fight each other with equal weapons and and conditions.



There's an entire gradient between execution and duel, and the judges of Brynth use all of it in their rulings.  What's more, ALL details of the combat are left up to the judge.  



The judge might say, "Since one of you obviously drowned the Marten's baby, I sentence you both to fight to the death in a room that is filling with water.  You may be armed with either a dried umbilical cord or a woman's steel comb, as is your preference.  One innocent man will leave, or none at all."



The judge might say, "Since the accused might have stolen the rancher's cows, I sentence him to be turned into a cow for a fortnight by the mages of the Titansblood Academy, and he will live among the herd that he might have threatened.  The rancher will be turned into a wolf for the same duration, and if the accused survives the trial, he is innocent."



The judge might say, "Since the crime was committed by surprise, so shall the judgement.  I sentence you both to fight to the death using only these weapons provided.  Now."  And then the judge throws a sword and a small tree branch on the ground in front of the bench, and it's up to the defendant and his accuser to react fast enough to get the sword and kill his opponent on the floor of the courtroom.



The judge might say, "Since there is small small chance that the accused didn't steal from the fishmonger, I sentence the two to fight until surrender.  The fishmonger shall be armed with full plate and a harpoon, while the accused shall be armed with only a frozen halibut."



I forgot to mention: when applicable, you'll fight naked and covered with paint.



Surprisingly, the judges aren't just pulling the sentences out of their ass.  There is a long a detailed history of law and precedent they consult.  That doesn't make it any less ridiculous, though, or any less popular among the spectators.



Lawyers in Brynth are called barristers (for no other reason except I needed a word for a badass lawyer).  You only get to be a barrister after you kill a lot of people in wartime and then pass a pretty comprehensive oral exam where you're grilled on Brynthic law while other barristers take turns fighting you with sticks for 24 hours on a mountain top.



Barristers are both the legal representation for their clients (like the lawyers you are familiar with), and they are also licensed to fight in place of their clients when it comes to the combat stage of the trial.  Because they are putting their neck on the line, barristers charge huge fees and are very picky about what trials they accept.  Whether or not they take the case depends a lot on who the other barrister is.



Multiple people can be sentenced at once.  The grand melee doesn't usually take place in the courtroom (although it might), and is more commonly performed in the arena or maybe a cage full of sleeping tigers whose drugs are wearing off.







The Land of Flowers



Remember when I said that Brynth is always meddling in world affairs?  They're the nation that most interested in halting Nothic expansion.  Maybe they just want another war, or maybe they don't want anyone raising an evil empire (having been down that road themselves).  Maybe they just don't like the way that "the empire's colonies" rolls off the tongue.



They've set up a counter-fort on the other side of the island.  Although they claim they're here to settle this unclaimed land now that it's been rediscovered, odds are good that they're just there to fuck with the Nothic settlers/looters.



Whatever the truth, they've brought a lot of soldiers, hounds, and lawyers.

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