Thursday, October 24, 2024

Class Social Features

Unsatisfied with the number of class features in PF2e/5e that pertained to the social characteristics of each character class, I went and wrote a few. The idea is that every player gets to pick one for their character. Character class need not match up with the corresponding ability below. So a wizard could take the 'Bard' ability, etc.

But everybody wanted two of them, so I said: "Well, okay. You can get a second one at level 10 or something."


Barbarian

You are accountable to traditions and customs that are not local to this land. If ever you do a faux pas, you may stake a claim to a foreign authority or tradition to absolve you of your crime. You are only ever guaranteed to get away with this once for each type of offense and group of people. It does not protect you from particularly severe consequences (like murder), but you may be able to, say, insult the mayor of a town or sleep with a wealthy merchant's daughter.


Bard

When you recap the last session at the start of this one, however you recap it become the history of the party. Your recap becomes a song, poem, or story that's shared wide and far. As you continue to develop this history, you will gradually become more famous.


Cleric

As a 1 Turn Ritual, you can spiritually determine whether a place is consecrated or desecrated (whether gods are watching or not). You can tell whether your devoted god is watching at any time instantly. If your god is watching and you do something glorious, you will be bequeathed a blessing.


Druid

You can concisely recount any knowledge you possess orally. You know the age of anything at a glance. You are exempt from all taxes. You may freely Speak with Animals provide you apologize to said animal and give them something tangibly valuable to you (a ration, a gold piece, a craft that took time to make, etc. Bigger animals like bigger/more things). You are forbidden from writing down your knowledge.


Fighter

You can assess anybody's physical 'Power Level' at a glance. The more time you spend studying them, the less vague your determinations.


Monk

Your personage is considered sacred. Any offense against your body is considered a sin. Anyone who's not a total rube will know it. If gods are watching, they'll know it.


Paladin

You instinctively know when oaths that you have professionally witnessed have been broken. This power does not tell you which one of those you've witnessed. You have a legal right to take from an oathbreaker that which they swore upon, and deliver it to authorities you recognize (state, religious, or otherwise).


Ranger

You know hidden pathways, water sources, and supply caches due to your membership in a Ranger's association. Each Association has about a half-dozen members, and oversees the wilderness and roads of the region you are currently adventuring in. Once per [a convenient amount of time] they all meet somewhere interesting - a smoky bar, a sacred grove, a place of power - to discuss professional matters.


Rogue

You can tell what class a person is by studying them for a minute, even if they're trying to hide it, unless they're an extraordinary actor. You always know the minimum acceptable bribe for a given situation.


Warlock

Your oathbreaking and lies cannot be detected unless you want it to (false negatives are automatically generated), even by magical means, even by a Paladin. You may masquerade as any other magic caster, and only masterful magicians can tell the difference by your practices.


Wizard/Sorcerer

You are part of a Wizard GangCollege Fraternity/Sorority, or Secret Society. You can instantly identify members of this organization, and you know their Cult Sign to verify it. Members are friendly by default, and will usually do their best to help you out. In any town you can spend a Watch to find fellow cultists.

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

CALIDUM - Twilight City

 CITY INTRODUCTION
GALEA
FUMO
BRIGHT TOWN
POMERIUM
CALDERA
CALIDUM
HISS
TENEBRIS
MOUNTAIN TEMPLE


Source: Rastislav Kubovic

CALIDUM

It’s warm enough here to make one sweat without armor, just the way the deep-dwellers like it. It feels like being in a barn attic in a hot summer, and smells about as pleasant. They pipe magma up from the depths in big stone tubes that radiate heat like an oven. Touch one get second degree burns. People stay well away. Slaves often don't have a choice.


Rarely are so many people squeezed into so narrow and hot a place so callously. There's always the sound of someone screaming, near or far, like cicadas in the distant wood or right inside your bedroom. The Grand Flesh Markets hide the suffering and ecstasy in fractal spaces of honeycombs upon honeycombs, down to the most remote of small places that can be a mere foot-leap away.


A primarily mercantile district, in which many of the Lesser Houses with their new money build their estates. A single giant hole to the sky in which all air is vented upwards gives the impression of all the space and freedom in the world. For good and ill, it gives people hope.


The Temple of Beauty
The acolytes and priestesses of the Temple of Beauty are unmistakable, for in their devotion they seek to emulate the "interminable Form of the gods". This study irreparably warps their flesh. Their eyes are far bigger than the outliers of their species, sometimes two or three times as large: big soft wet orbs with expressive depth, sometimes over the line of the uncanny. Their bodies plunge towards voluptuousness, towards softness and roundness like paleolithic fertility goddesses. Eyes bigger, bodies rounder, it all cumulates at the totality of the eye and the sphere, where Beauty is beheld. To the foreigner this transformation can seem horrific.

The Temple is a pillared dome, like the Pantheon. A single aperture in the ceiling welcomes in the light of the sun and the moon captured by a mirror array on its peak. Acolytes and servants busy themselves in serving the study of beautiful forms and debating what makes them so. Side chapels host mirrors, nearly all subtly warped and curved to accentuate certain parts - and as one sees reality eventually becomes.

Its greatest treasure, Beauty, painted by the divine artist Acerion during the reign of the second Spider Queen Amantia, lies in such a side chapel, guarded by a network of acolytes and priestesses and finally The Eye Tyrant Azrith'rir - the epitome of the temple's philosophy. The journey to it, though, can be severely disorienting. As the flesh of the acolytes warps the deeper one goes, so too does the space. The hallways seem to bend against gravity. Rooms seem too large or small to pass through. There are too many mirrors, too many watching eyes. Then eyes within eyes within eyes...

The acolytes and priestesses of the Temple of Beauty are highly desired, not just for their spherical appearance (which the drow find irresistible) but for their blessed countenance. It is believed that the mere proximity of this beauty grants favorable divine disposition in all matters: business, pleasure, and war.



C1: Two Wine-Stained Youths
Statues depicting two sons in merriment, each clasping a tipping cup. Stale wine soaks their feet and the chalices of many beseechers litter the ground. The shrine is always tended by two drunk brothers, and when they can no longer stand they are replaced by two others. It's a fanciful life for a beggar-acolyte, to live on offerings of wine and more wine.

The story goes that these two brewed the first venom-wine: fermented mushrooms mixed with honeywasp venom. It made them drunk-high for a week, and gave offered gods such a buzz that they forgot their obligations to their nations. Three patron gods of archery, justice, and masonry nursed hangovers while their cities were sacked.


The Baelic Bathes
House Bael, Lessers of great wealth from moneylending, offer the most scalding and chilling of baths in the entire city. For those who really enjoy their hot baths to be literally scalding, or cold as ice. Frequented by athletes preparing their bodies for the Baelathon - yearly games of strength and endurance of which the primary contests are climbing, swimming, and exposure.

Snow is brought down from Galea and magma pumped up from Tenebris to offer baths both literally boiling and ice cold. For the most extreme of customers, they even offer magma rooms and pools of near-frozen mercury, liquid at much lower temperatures than water.

The Kordelian Arena
Paid for by the graces of wealthy House Kordelia. Sometimes called "The Black". It is a vertical amphitheater of 180 degrees: patrons can watch through holes in the ceiling, standing above and sneering down at the fights below. It's customary to toss down fine drink and food to victors.

 Judicial fights are most prominent in this arena: prisoners being executed for religious crimes, being fed to monsters or carved up by rude gladiators. Avadia di la Kordelia is the Master of Ceremonies and Executor of the Law. She is every bit as bloody and theatric as her reputation precedes. Overseeing these proceedings is the Idol of Ikord-Victory, who is as eager as anyone to see good contest.

Sometimes the Arena will host unusual exhibition fights, particularly on religious festivals: tunnel fighting, with the floor replaced by glass and an ant colony dug underneath; orcish aquathon, underwater wrestling with the arena flooded; demon baiting, as dangerous as it sounds.

Stepmonger's Guild
The grand guild house of vertical porters, elevator operators, roofers, ladder lenders, and stair guards. Resembles a tower a princess might be imprisoned in, but a bit broader and grander. The stairs ascending to the building begin level with the rest of the district, and climb ten stories high near straight up, so that the guild can keep a watch on its monopoly of height. A monopoly minded by force: use anything even resembling the a ladder, without the guild's permission, and you'll be visited by ladder-breaking thugs when you sleep. Easier to just pay the guild its fee or give up your dreams of ascension.

Services, from most expensive to least expensive, also from highest guild rank to lowest:
  • Elevator: The guild operates an elevator that goes from Mountain Temple to Calidum. It is essentially a big loading elevator, managed by the Castle Priests of House Ronove, who wear boxy shoulderpads and pray to the ropes. Typically used to move expensive, fragile goods or religious idols during holidays.
  • Stair Guards: intimidating enough to hold a portal and demand money. Usually there's no charge for going down stairs, only up.
  • Roofers: fixing roofs, floors, and cables. Requires good balance and solid training.
  • Ladder Lenders: they rent ladder usage and do thuggery on unsanctioned ladders, or anything approaching an unsanctioned ladder.
  • Vertical Porters: they carry heavy things up and down stairs, and are trained on perilous stairs like mountain mules. Most guild members are this. Considered the dregs of the guild, and often get hazed or bullied by more senior members.

Hilla de Ronove is guildmaster: a Lesser of great power and influence, whose House god is Ronald the Castle. A statue-shrine to his smiling self dominates the guild hall. (If you're picturing a ten foot statue of Ronald McDonald, you're not far off.) Hilla is a greedy and capricious woman: rotund but incredibly fit (she does climb stairs and ladders basically all day), surrounded by hefty bodyguards, richly dressed. She spends much of her time playing the Greater Houses against each other so that she can maintain her House's dominance. Otherwise, she realizes, they would all gang up against her.


Barber
Cleanliness and hairlessness are important to social standing in November. And "To get the smoothest cut you will need a good barber from Choom and Daughters." There are no finer body scrapings in November! They will get those pesky, shameful hairs, from crown to darkest reaches, and at very affordable prices. Advertised frequently, particularly in the neighboring baths.

Choom is a kobold, and has the patronage of House Kaisar, whose god is a sharp knife - a favorable match for any barber, no doubt. Manumitted a kobold generation ago, Choom dreams of sending her daughters, now citizens, into the military for plunder, glory, and advancement. She's quite optimistic for the future, having just bought some tall steady-standing skeletons to reach high places for her.

Gods' Glories Gladitor Family
The preeminent gladiatorial school in November, funded by House Kordelia and run by Invincible Andrus -  a man said to have ate the flesh of dragons and acquired their strength. He has that kind of dragonborn look to him, for certain. He has never lost a match against man or beast, but he is starting to get on in years, so he's been freed and retired to gladiatorial instruction. His saying goes: "If you're going to die, die well." One day, in his mind, he'll live up to this code.

Kordelia is most famous for hosting games of exotic monster fighting, and often buys creatures from foreign hunters and traders at exorbitant fees for this purpose. As such, the Gods' Glories train to fight them, but also to serve as loyal bodyguards for the matron and her family. Nobody wants to fight a gladiator in the streets, much less a Glory monster hunter who can wrestles beasts that eat man.

That said, their reputation and fearsome appearance is largely what keeps them dominant. Few are willing to test themselves against the best the House of Victory has to offer, and that means they're more bark than bite when fighting against people.

Breadmaker
Grains are a novel food to the Novans. A diet of sunless crops like protean algae and bitter mushroom wine make bread taste sweet as cupcake. It's cheap enough now that the common folk can afford it, and they can't get enough of it. It's always in demand. The breadmaker Harember always runs out of the big round cracked loafs. Broad-shouldered, square chin, stocky like his Ember ancestors and highly tolerant of heat - this man is like a Hercules of breadmakers. He's got no time. Always busy. Shrine to Lera, god of spawn and erection out front. Makes sense - doesn't bread also rise, like mushrooms and penises? This is how bakers get the reputation for fecundity.

Cloud District
Moisture catches and lingers on the inside rim of the caldera, where the Cloud District apartments snake up the inside walls of the mountain like veins from the aeorta of the city. A great many people live here along the narrow and treacherous stairs. They quickly become used to climbing or else they become used to falling. There are no guardrails, and some paths seem more for mountain goats than man. It's not uncommon to hear of someone 'unfortunately plummeting', particularly if they crossed the Stepmongers.

To prevent this fate, many stairs in the Cloud District have little shrines to Orienio on the first step, depicting a hooved god of the mountains holding a curved staff like a shepherd's hook. Prayers can help find sure-footing and decisive action when needed.


C2: The Owl-Headed Man
Expressions can be tricky to read on a bird's face, but luckily the horned owl always expresses the contempt it feels. Man from the neck down, owl from the neck up. He holds scales in the right hand and collects offerings in the left. People leave him bloody hearts.

He is the patron god of the Measurers Guild, and they do not speak his name for fear of catching his judging eyes. Petitioners make offerings when they have an important decision to make: hefty business transactions, coupling proposals, joining the army. The Owl-Headed Man offers wisdom and augury. The Measurer's Guild, however, are a corrupt bunch. Sometimes by trickery they tip the scales one way or the other, and they take bribes to influence results.

The Practical Market
In the forum before the Owl-Headed Man lies The Practical Market, where the Measurer's Guild does their business. Upon the many divine scales are people judged and weighed against the seemingly impossible standards established by the Guild. What is the measure of a man? At the Practical Market they would know.

On any given day between one hundred and five thousand enslaved people, cattle, and creatures make their way through the bureaucracy of the Practical Market. The masters of the Measurers Guild know them all to terrifying detail. How do you measure a slaves loyalty? A bodyguard's courage? A chattel's hope? They know: by fanatically-guarded standards and systems of 'new numbers' have they reduced life to their scales.

Yet still there is corruption: Measurers are often bribed to the pleasure of buyer and seller and sometimes even the measured. Hints, perhaps, of cracks in the system. One might think that absolute knowledge of the measure of man would withhold their cynicism, but to the contrary it seems to flourish. Perhaps the measures are not as foolproof as is claimed...

The Living Pits
It's as awful as it sounds: anywhere from one to ten thousand living enslaved peoples and livestock kept in pits or stone cages. Disease is common, as is cruelty, callousness, and indifference. The more successful November's military campaigns are, the worse it gets.

The guards and overseers are all privately managed, with stipends paid for either by the Measurer's Guild or their employing Houses. The only one who feasibly keeps them in check is the Priestess Glomia di la Vassago, who has religious authority to chastise both overseer and slave under the invocations of foreign law-giving gods, but it concerned more with 'right behavior' and a smoothness of proceedings, rather than kindness. Still, the imprisoned people look up to her for protection, as they have no-one else.

In the darkest corners of the Pits, people whisper with spiders and dream of vengeance against their masters. The outlawed Cult of Poisons lives on in unbroken chain from slave to slave, teaching conspiratorial secrets: how to make the poison, how to administer it, and how not to get caught. They listen and forget the recipes, to remember them in dreams later on, becoming sleepers for the whispered outlaw goddess. It is as the Priestesses would fear: the forsaken matron-god of the dead monarchy lives on, fostering betrayal and the righteous consumption of noble flesh.

The Dead Pits
It's hard to imagine a place worse than the Living Pits, but here it is: where the flesh of the matronless dead becomes bound in servitude until their bodies grind to dust. Chilled by corridors bored through the mountain wall, the Dead Pits are a feast for the enterprising necromancer. Dead beggars, debtors, unclaimed foreigners, and the dead enslaved are brought here. Anyone who would have been buried without honors or acclaim ten generations ago are now fodder for the machine of civilization, to be resurrected and put to work by their previous owners or the state.

The necromancers are tireless. There aren't quite enough of them to keep up with inventory, so they inhale vapors prepared down in Tenebris to keep them alert and potent in magic. Some haven't slept in months, and it shows on their faces: they call it 'death mask'. Principle among the accountants of the risen dead is Tulia di Fingol-Mar, of the House of Worms. She ensures that the Worm God gets their due: innards and organs taken from zombies and skeletons to-be, fed to the worms for their god's necromantic blessing. It's an economic necromantic engine: bodies get blessings to make zombies, to acquire more bodies to get more blessings.

The job of collecting bodies for the Dead Pits is so horrid, disrespected, and dangerous than only the most dishonored of undead do it. These Drudges are November's lowest of the low, and are forbidden from most places in the city.

Cloth Dealer
Cloth dealing is a cutthroat business. The best and most profitable silks are low in supply, and loyalty is an alien concept to the spiders of Tenebris. Those who mean to outbid Glasya di Bael will need to contend with her hired muscle in the Pickhand Family. She pays them partially in discounts on expensive silks, making them the best-dressed gangsters in the city.

Cloth and color are at the heart of class. It is easy to masquerade as your betters, provided your can buy or steal the proper wardrobe. Bolts of cloth, enough to weave an outfit, in terms of cost relative to the earnings of the average shroom farmer:

One Month's Work: Myzal. Spun torn fibers from structural mushroom varieties by the teeth of Tenebri harvesters. Cold when it's cold, and hot when it's hot. The poor man's cloth. Often better to wear nothing at all, save for the shame of nakedness.

Two Month's Work: Downy Wool. The birdherd's prospect. Keeps one warm in the mountains, but itchy and somewhat smelly. Painfully insulating in the hot mountain deep. Popular among working class in Fumo.

One Years Work: Catcher Silk. Spun from the webs of Catcher Spiders in the deep. Lightly sticky, but very comfortable. Common adornment for well-to-do peoples of all stripes.

Hundred Years Work: Widow Silk. Bought with flesh and curated spider-mates. Produced in the deepest darkest of pits by the grand Widows of the deep. The mainstay of the patrician class, further made costly by expensive dyes. Feels like a second skin, and is as strong as chainmail.

Ten-Thousand Years Work: Royal Silk. Made by the descendants of the ignominious Spider Goddess, of which all but two known remain. To wear this is to declare yourself royalty or god. Worn only during triumphs by those who have accomplished Invocatio - the theft of a god. Said to grant utter invulnerability, and feels like the warm embrace of the divine.


Public Granary
Public grain for public use, as determined by the Priestesses of the Temple of November. Most often it's contracted to bakers to make bread for public games. Sometimes surplus is given to the legions. You would be surprised how dangerous it is: for guarding the grain is a hypoxic labyrinth to which only the Priestesses are privy.

In the early days of the city, grain theft was common. Criminals were common, yes, but also fiery things from the wild volcano below. A combustible spirit loves nothing more than setting alight wheat. It's practically they're favorite thing to burn! And so in those early days the houseless stonecutter Hanon constructed a defense: the hypoxic labyrinth.

The storerooms are guarded by winding passageways, chokepoints, and hypoxic sumps. Perhaps fire could creep into a cell here or there and snatch some grain, but all of them? Unlikely. Difficult for thieves, too, since there are traps and false ends and confusing motifs to strangle a wizened adventurer. Every so often tale will be told of a grain thief become lost and buried in 'heavy air'. Their corpses are put on public display to dissuade other thieves. Evidently, it doesn't always work.

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Tomb of the Iconoclast - Level 1 Rooms 25-37

  INTRODUCTION

LEVEL 2 (TBD)

~~~~~

LEVEL 1
Entrances: Tomb Entrance (1-1), Crawling Bats (1-10), Cistern (1-17)
For a bigger map, link here: Tomb of the Iconoclast Map

Made in Gridmapper

1-25. Buried Warriors
Twenty five sarcophagi, all but eight of which have been steamrolled to dust. Within eight are mummified warriors of the Iconoclast’s house, who will rise to defend it if any religious symbols are brought past the Iconoclast’s Seal in the center of the room.


The Iconoclast’s Seal lies engraved in a circular stone 10ft in diameter in the middle of the room. It is covered in dust and smashed sarcophagi, but underneath depicts the scratched-face Iconoclast beside a great bull, holding aloft his great hammer.


The eight Warriors wield great sledgehammers with unusual ease. Their flesh has long turned to dust but the glimmer of gold bracelets remain. They wear brigandines of shattered idol-stone - impossibly heavy to wear without magical aid. Within the eyesockets of their skulls are each two pieces of well-crafted obsidian, worth 50gp each. Their gold bracelets are worth 100gp each.

Buried Warriors
2 HD
1d12 Great Hammer
Undead Immunities
Great Hammer - Their attacks can effortlessly destroy walls, doors, floors, and other means of impeding them. Destroying the floor in Room 25 drops occupants 20ft down to Rooms 2-31 to 2-34.

1-26. False Tomb
Open empty stone casket sits before an elevated throne. Upon it sits a skeleton who believes he is the Iconoclast, dressed in torn funerary regalia centuries old. Behind the throne is a melted-face statue of the Iconoclast. In the wings of the room are seated a hundred mostly broken skeletons on bleacher-like stone benches, sitting in witness.

Upon detecting intruders, this False Iconoclast shall announce: “WHO DISTURBS THE REST OF SO GREAT A KING?? ANSWER FOR THY TRANSGRESSIONS, OR MY SERVANTS WILL FLENSE THY FLESH!”

The False Iconoclast was once a servant of the Iconoclast, buried with honors, but now he believes himself to be that man, evidenced by all of the things he was buried with, which he shall recall:

“A Sword” - Barber’s tools, razor chief among them.
“A Royal Animal” - hamster bones
“Kingly Adornments” - a golden comb. (Worth 100gp)

He was the Iconoclast’s servant and barber, but will deny it. If evidence to this effect is brought, he will deny it not more than twice. On third evidence, he will piece things together and despair, providing no further resistance. Maybe after some ruminating he'll seek a new master to offering his skills in barbering and surgery.

The Nameless Servant can rouse some dozen skeletons if things come to blows. "SERVANTS! YOUR KING IS IN PERIL! COME TO MY AID!" They are armed with sharpened bones and knives but severely lacking in skill.

False Iconoclast
4 HD
No Attacks
Undead Immunities
Each Round the mummy takes 1d12 damage and deals an equal amount of damage to anybody who is next to him. When he runs out of HP he will crumble into ash.

Broken Skeleton
0 HD
1d3 Sharp Implement
Undead Immunities

1-27. Bathhouse Entrance
Tread tracked inlay upon the ground where the Juggernaut has repeatedly rolled over. Mosaics cover the walls depicting the boiling of priests. Underneath the plaster are scenes of humans and nymphs bathing. The northern wall crumbles.
 
1-28. Scenic Mosaics
Mosaics on the walls depict natural scenes: fields of flowers, calm brooks, the ocean, rolling hills. Tiny precious stones are among them, with 100 x 5gp jasper and 200 x 5sp turquoise.

Harvesting them will require tools, and 1 Turn per 6d6 stones per person captured. If half of the jasper stones are stripped from the north walls, it will reveal a secret door. If half the turquoise are stripped from the south walls, the wall will collapse into the cave section Room 34.

1-29. Shambling Mound
An untended idol of a young man lies in an ancient bath, surrounded by a garden of leafy vines. The idol itself is a defaced god of the vine, with eyes scratched out and stone cup draping in hand.

The Shambling Mound is scaffolded around the idol, which is broken in several pieces. Those who disturb the statue or plants will be greeted with its sudden standing, followed by attempts from the plant-covered idol to get people to drink its black draught (which is acid from the pool). Settled in the bottom of the cup are two thumbnail-sized rubies worth 500gp each. If the acid is drained they will be revealed and offered by the Mound.

If nobody will drink, or if attacked, it will cast the acid in the cup upon the intruders. The rubies will scatter into the brush (requiring a very careful search to find).

Shambling Idol-Mound
4 HD
1d12 Acid Splash / 1d6 / 1d6 Bludgeoning Vines
Plant Immunities
Healed by Acid Damage (It can Acid Splash itself)
Engulf: It is hits with both Vine attacks it engulfs the defender, causing entanglement and automatic 1d6 damage per Round.

1-30. Acid Pool
The walls are half-dissolved and splattered with gold flecks. Pool filled with molten, glimmering gold - but only on its topmost settled layer. Beneath it is powerful acid, filled with dissolved idol-stone. It bubbles like overcooked pasta sauce. The room is oddly hot. Amidst the pool is a single undissolved stone arm raised up, in greeting, salute, or perhaps a thumbs-up. (DM's choice.)

1-31. Three Chests, Two Mimics
The plaster is peeling off the walls, revealing mosaics of revelers relaxing and drinking wine. One dark-eyed depiction conceals holes where the Cauldron Spider (Room 15) will spy on people.

Three chests sit in this room. One is made of manganese, one is made of wood, and the third made of stone. The wooden and stone chests are in fact mimics, who have forgotten they are sentient beings. Their contents are filled with teeth and flesh, though they will not stir if opened, even if they are stabbed - the dungeon has forgotten all their instinct.

If removed from the dungeon, they will remember themselves in 2d4 Days, and likely attack anything around.

The manganese chest is empty, but contains a false bottom. Within are a jumble of rings made of various metals - in total 47 rings, worth 1000gp total. One ring, made of platinum, is a Ring of Acid Immunity

1-32. Old Baths
Ancient hot tub-sized baths plastered over - now repositories. Each little bath (a-d) was 4ft deep.

a. Empty, dusty, broken open.
b. Plastered, filled with miscellaneous jewelry - bone, stone, gem, all ancient - all items intended as gifts for god-idols. Together worth 10gp. Among them is a an Earring of Hearing, composed of three bone loops fused together. Wearing the earring greatly enhances the user’s hearing, so that they can always hear what is being whispered in the same room, and doors can be heard through without pressing an ear to them.
c. Plastered, filled with weirdly round smooth stones - river stones, it turns out.
d. Sealed off by plaster. Water bath. Still operational, strangely. The waters are warm and welcoming. Taking a bath grants 1d10 temporary HP if you spend a Turn bathing, but you will trigger Something is Lost…

1-33. Hot Room
This room is hot and humid like a sauna. It smells like combusted gas. A careful look around reveals an ancient scroll case on the ceiling - rusted metal, with old adornments depicting lines of priests walking in retrograde of each other. It contains the Prayer Scroll of Onderboven, which can be used at the god’s idol in his cave in the Valley of Wells to gain his powers.

Otherwise the Prayer Scroll could be sold to an antiquarian for 50gp.

1-34. Steady Drip
Water drips down from the ceiling, forming reflective shallow pools. Otherwise empty.

In the southern part of the cave is a bricked-up wall long smashed apart, leading downward stairs. In the southern part of this section along the floor is a secret removable stone panel in the wall. Against the western wall there are two heavy steel bars barring a removable section of wall, granting access to the backside of the Juggernaut in Room 24, if it's not rumbling around (5 in 6 chance by default).

1-35. Calm Pool
Cave pool with tiny aquamarine snails within, each the size of a pinky fingernail. By the pool's edge is a pestle and mortal, stained slightly blue by snail guts. If one can gather and mash up enough of them (takes one person one Turn), one dose of potent Forgetfulness Poison can be produced. There are enough snails to produce 1d4 doses every month.

This Forgetfulness Poison, when absorbed, causes the victim to forget how to do the next significant action they want to do for 1d6 Turns. Multiple doses multiply the length of this effect by rolling one additional d6 per dose and multiplying the duration in Turns by that amount.

1-36. Falling Door Trap 
A great door of lead, fifteen feet tall. It depicts the enemy-soldiers of the Iconoclast being crushed by a strange steamroller-machine (the Juggernaut), with the Iconoclast riding it like a chariot. It shows them cartoonishly flattened afterwards, displaying great terror. Two great handles are upon the door, if pulled then the whole door will come crashing down, smooshing those before it unless they dodge away.

The sound of the falling door will alert the Juggernaut, and it will come in 3d4 Rounds.

1-37. Crawl Space
A crawl space 3ft high. Secret removable stone panels built into the walls of Rooms 25 and 34 allow access. Provided it's not rumbling around (1 in 6 chance by default), the Juggernaut can be observed through a peephole. Squirreled away in here are the bones of a forgotten priest. Embroidered on their crumbling silk robes are depictions of poppy flowers.

On the body is an animal bone pipe worth 100gp, a scattered of small animal bones (mouse), and nine golden teeth (each 10gp).

Thursday, August 29, 2024

The d∞

The dissertation project of theoretical mathematician Professor Dies Yaws Githe, recovered from the depths of the MEGA-MEGA-YETI-HAND section of the Infinity Hotel. The die appears as an iridescent d20 of some kind of bone or ivory, of the typical size and dimensions you'd have available at the table. The grain of the bone on each of the sides appears to shift and warp under non-rolled conditions.

Professor Dies theorized it was made from the long tooth of the fabled Recursive Infinicorn. Under normal circumstances, when the die is rolled it will produce a symbol on its topmost face which in all likelihood represents some impossibly-too-large-to-understand number. Staring at the number for even a short time produces headaches and nausea in little tiny apelike human brains. It is infinitely impossible that the same symbol will ever appear again.

Under unusual probabilistic circumstances when something is fiddling with fate, such as the influence of a god, a probabilistic entity, or a mathematical determinator, something else is likely to happen entirely. As such, the Professor Dies discovered that the die can be used much like a canary in the coalmine for the proximity of anomalous probabilistic influences.

The Die Has Been Cast! (d20)

(And circumstances are NOT normal!)

1. The Die keeps rolling and rolling, faster and faster, heating up itself and the air around it. If not restrained it will bore through the earth and produce a thermal explosion about 1 to 20 meters below the surface, producing the effects of an Earthquake spell. It can be painstakingly recovered. A restrained infinitely-rolling die can probably be made into an everlasting reactor, or something.

2. The Die splits into two dice, each of exactly half the volume and mass as the original. Every 1d20 seconds it will do this again. Unless time is somehow reversed it will continue to split until it becomes a pile of Recursive Sand the same mass and volume as the die. Anything that eats, breaths, or looks at this sand for a modest amount of time effectively becomes a living Infinity Die, and will function as the die would in similar circumstances. It is up to you as to what 'being rolled' encompasses. If the Recursive Sand is scattered into an environment it will have similar results upon the environment, resulting in weird probabilistic nonsense like trees growing into squares or water flowing against gravity.

3. Higher dimensional projections fail and the Die puffs out becoming a sphere of equal mass and volume. Hypothetically there is an infinitely small die face oriented up at any given time, but in all likelihood it's going to start rolling downhill.

4. The Die splits into two dice, along with the one who rolled it, producing a Doppelganger of the roller who in any given situation will do the opposite of what the player-character does, even if it's obviously self-destructive. All future results of each of the dice have half the normal number of outcomes (d4):

  1. Evens + Odds. Easy enough. Effects this Table's results.
  2. One to Halfway + Halfway to Infinity. Virtually functionally identical.
  3. Infinity + Infinity x 2. Second die rolls twice on this table.
  4. All Digits Ending in 1-5 + All Digits Ending in 6-0. Effects this Table's results.
If this result and its sub-table eventually produce an impossible combination, then a Paradox Archangle (sic) will come and beat the shit out of you for messing with reality.

5. For the next 5 rolls in which it's applicable: X in Y chances are now Y - X in Y chances. (Ex: 1 in 6 becomes 5 in 6.)

6. The digits shown seem like a summoning circle. Whatever is messing with your fate spontaneously appears out from the die in reverse-spaghettification. If it's a god then they will be present in the flesh, and they might need to explain themselves, or you could possibly murder them forever. If it's a probabilistic entity it'll probably be pretty confused as to why it just got reverse-sphaghettified, and possibly meander a bit or eat the luck of everyone present. If it's a probabilistic determinator, then congratulations! You now have a new probabilistic determinator in your possession! If none of the above seem plausible, then The Devil appears, laughs, and offers to buy back his die for deferred sentence in Hell. Refuse his third offer and he'll simply take it.

7. Strange number! For the next 7 dice rolls not related to the Infinity Die, the roller can determine their results.

8. The next time the roller rolls a standard die roll for your system, they roll two dice and add them together to generate the result.

9. The Die fumbles and rolls out of existence. To the lay observer it will have simply disappeared. It's on some higher plane now! Can be retrieved by Astral Projection or similar plane-shifting.

10. The die becomes as a mirror face, and a shady individual appears within it. They ask for someone to kill, and require only a name. Given a name, the Mirror Assassin, who moves in reflections, will go and kill this person provided there are any reflective surfaces for him to use. He is very patient, capable of waiting centuries for a time to strike.

11. Professor Dies Yaws Githe spontaneously appears! Alongside him is a rotting worm-infested corpse that looks like it just came out of a shallow grave (because it did). Professor Dies will be momentarily very confused, as he will have just been teleported from whatever he was previously doing. 1 in 6 chance he's indecent. After coming to his senses, he'll realize what happened: "You rolled EPSILON-DEVILFACE-DEVILFACE again. Well, welcome to the club you poor sod!" This die roll summons anybody who ever rolled this number, dead or alive. Professor Dies unfortunately had to put down this poor nameless bloke, who believed he was an evil ghost and tried to kill him. It was self-defense, he assures you!

If circumstances are amenable, Professor Dies can explain the Infinity Die and its strange mathematics. Unfortunately he can only do so in terms that someone with at least a graduate degree in fantasy theoretical mathematics could understand, so it's best to gloss over it 'off camera'. He can also explain that he is currently researching why he isn't being constantly summoned forever: if infinity exists, then infinite instances of this die roll being rolled should exist, and he (and you) should be being teleported all over infinity forever. This apparently isn't the case. He best hypothesis involves ghosts.

12. The Die result is 12. The odds of this happening naturally are 1/∞. Incredible! The next 1d12 die results on any die that can roll a 12 rolls will be 12, including on the Infinity Die and the d12 rolled to determine the number of twelves. The odds of this happening naturally are considerably less than 1/∞, which really calls into question the principles of probability in general. If somebody comments that that initial 12 really shouldn't count, since it means there are only really 11 rolls that become 12, then you are obligated to tell them they are stupid and unnecessarily argumentative!

13. The number rolled gains the attention of a Super-Planar Devourer, whose projection appears in the form of a mass of slavering mouths which will latch onto and eat anything they touch, sending the bits and pieces bitten off scattering through higher dimensions to be lost forever. This can destroy literally anything in this reality. If the roller didn't cast the die away from them for the initial roll they must Save or lose a limb. The Devourer will linger in place for 1d6 Days before unlatching from reality. For the Devourer, this is the equivalent of licking a mossy rock for sustenance. Great for destroying undestroyable things!

14. The roller gains a glimpse of the future on the die face. At the roller's choosing, they to retroactively act upon an event it as if they had known about it one minute prior to it happening. What they did cannot prevent the event from happening, but it can give them some sort of advantage.

15. The Grim Reaper appears, and informs you that you have just wagered your life against your death. The roller chooses a game of chance of their liking. If there's a house advantage, then the Grim Reaper gets to be the House. Win the game, and the roller is functionally immortal (though not eternally young or abled, see: Tithonus). Lose, and the Reaper instantly claims his due.

16. The roller gains a glimpse of a strange number and gains strange insight into the nature of mathematics. They can now comprehend very very very very very very large numbers, and the roller doesn't get sick when looking at them, such as under 'normal' rolling circumstances for the Infinity Die. Additionally, they now comprehend and remember all arcane symbols and can ascertain their meanings, and they are no longer affected by the effects of magical runes unless they want to be.

17. The Die result is 17. The odds of this happening naturally are 1/∞. Incredible!

18. Chosen roll! Every subsequent time the roller naturally rolls a '18', they bank a roll of 18 which can be used in place of any future roll. You can only have one '18' banked at a time, unless you roll this result again on the Infinity Die without using a banked 18, in which case the number of banked '18's goes up by one.

19. God appears (or whatever passes as closest to God in your setting) and commands that you roll the die again. Technically speaking, you have free will, so you could refuse, but that probably wouldn't go well. I suppose if you have something to say to God now is the time. If you refuse three times then a Saint will appear and snatch up the die, using the good fortune of God's blessings to escape.

20. Wish Number. Gain one Wish.