Friday, June 8, 2018

What Automates This Golden Barge?

How does your campaign ship run? Is it a horizon fort which suddenly appears in a new place, its walls leaking blood into the fresh earth and staining your footprint upon new land? Have you been aboard your golden barge so long that you cannot sleep without the sibilant chanting of the kobold barge-worshipers who keep the engine going? Did the ghosts of prior crews chase away that para-demon which tried to stalk the stony corridors of your comet-ship?

What automates this campaign ship? roll 2d6

1. Kobold barge-worshipers
2. Skeletons, semisentient, various stages of decay, various levels of radiation
3. semi-sentient crew vine. 50% some poison ivy
4. unseen servants running off mana batteries
5. precision feng shui of the architecture
6. tiny clay golems made in a small kiln from exotic dirt
7. blue electric gnomes
8. ghosts of prior crew
9. manipulating a scale model of the vehicle at its helm, 'just works'
10. bound demon-crew

The crew has needs of their own. Skeletons need replacement parts, kobolds need some food. Demons want shore leave but gods help the shore.

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Quill Scenarios: Academia de Asasinos, Lost Seedship

Basement-Dwelling University Town Resident

You are on a bucolic island, Kalla, roomed in the basement of an old friend, Boory al-Safufi. She is a wonderful host and a professor at the local college. Which is actually the Academia de Asesinos. Tenured positions are limited, and several enterprising postdocs want Boory's position. They are less interested in waiting for her to retire than they are in exploring the practical application of their research.

Profile: You are writing a 'newcomer's perspective' article for the campus paper, Black Poisoned Glove. They want a piece for incoming freshmen, giving them a little special insight into the lives of their professors.

Ink Pot

corpse / dead student
contact poison / Last Sleep
doorknob trap / finger-pinch razor
morbid writings / theoretical treatise
ambitious postdoc / Karol "Wire" Rallner
small crossbow / alley piece
hairpin / concealed weapon
friendly lecture / veiled threat
rope / silk strand
casual admission / orchestrated falsehood
library / wizardarium
steel wire / garrote part
academic robes / discrete armor
folding sword / Blood Sup
blurry garment of many faces / scrambler suit

Results
5 or less: An attempt on Boory's life catches you in the crossfire. You wake up in a drifting cathedral / hospital ship, having lost all your items. If you had no items, you are dead.

6-9: You manage to make 15 gp off your article - the newspaper is reasonably happy. 

10+: The newspaper loves your think-piece and gives you 30gp, and a mostly-used bottle of Ink of Correction (1 use left).

Lost Seedship

You are adrift in a seedship in the deep blue. The craft is a little smaller than a launch, comfortable enough for short trips, but you've been aboard it for weeks. Its living body slowly pulses and gurgles in the sun, amidst your dwindling supplies. The clouds above and below are a haze, and no islands or moons are in sight.

Profile => You are writing a daily log while watching carefully for any signs of civilization. Or just food and water.

Ink Pot 
 friendly vessel / mirage
blue flowers / rain catchers
undermast / stinger
flying fish / cloud trout
rations / venerable MREs of the wizard war
parasites / drumhead beetles 
giant bats / seedeaters
man-sized bat / young seedeater
drifting ship / dead hulk
flares / illusion wands
windy storm / drop tempest
still / becalmed
white noise crystal / radio

5 or less: You find land with water, but you are marooned on a will-o-wisp laden island. See "Marooned" and take the Wisp Whisperer class.

6-9: You manage to signal to a nearby naval vessel, which takes you onboard and treats you for exposure and malnutrition. Your journal is detailed enough that they pay you 15 gp as an explorer's fee, as you had drifted through uncharted sky. They'll drop you at King's Port after a few more weeks (see 'Fire in the Sky').

10+: The naval vessel rewards you with 30 gp and a small bottle of Cinder Ink (3 uses) for your detailed cartographic maps of the uncharted area. They'll drop you at King's Port after a few more weeks (see 'Fire in the Sky').

Sunday, June 3, 2018

OWL FACE


My daughter helped me with this one.

3 HD
No. Encountered: d4 + 1
4 in 6 sneak
4 in 6 detect sneaks
fly
hypno-eye: save or you cannot attack or break eye contact with the owl face in question. You get to re-save every time it or another Owl Face attacks you.
Wants: they steal magic, tech, and fabric and take them to their 'nest' in the deep woods to build strange machines

Looks like a human in a long cloak wearing a painted wooden mask. Of course, it's not a mask, and their cloaks are a strange set of boneless membrane that allows them to fly at a decent pace. They move from village to village, stripping them of various items, occasionally attacking people (1d6 claws) but generally doing hit-and-run attacks. (On a successful hit, they can disarm, trip, or temporarily blind someone, typically allowing them to flee.)