d40 Nightmare Art

Sometimes you just need a big ol' table for spooky art pieces.

Nightmare Art (d40)

d40	Medium	Art
1	Glass Sculpture	A translucent glass spider. It moves when you’re not looking.
2	Written symphony	Slowly dissociates anyone who listens. Listen all the way through and lose your soul.
3	Optical Illusion	The shadow of a man that stalks you. Visible around corners, attached to nothing.
4	Clay sculpture	Bust depicting drowning person. Impossibly lifelike.
5	Embroidery	Dolls trapped in spider cocoons. Spiders made of silk farm them.
6	Doll	Uncannily lifelike. Feels like touching a miniature person, but it bends and twists in ways no person should when pressure is applied.
7	Doll	Perfectly realistic in nearly every way except the face, which is disturbingly cartoonish and out of place.
8	Rolled Scroll	“Trapped”: Picture of a horrified and warped man rolled up into claustrophobic space. Tucked into a crack in the wall.
9	Silver Globe	“Moon”: Replica of the spherical moon, as seen from earth. The entire unseen side contains a horrible face.
10	Steel Sculpture	An 8ft tall person made of knives.
11	Skeleton	“Circle”: Real skeleton warped into eating itself: feet bent backward and into ribcage.
12	Skeleton	“Needles”: Skeleton upon an altar. Thousands of small rusted steel needles piercing bones from within and piled below ribcage.
13	Tapestry	Vantablack tapestry. Cannot see the individual threads.
14	Embroidery	“Swallow”: A face of monstrous gape. Mouths where every orifice is.
15	Book	“Early Memory”: Fiction that subtly manipulates reader into having book implant early childhood memories.
16	Leather Sculpture	“Wind”: A pillar of hides, twisting around into a spire. Eyeless animal faces throughout.
17	Taxidermy	Perfect taxidermy of a man. Frighteningly still. The eyes are glass. Skin is real. Examination reveals he did this to himself.
18	Wind Chimes	Produces the sound of a woman crying to help when wind blows past. Faster the wind the louder it gets. Walking by triggers quiet cries.
19	Song	“Empty House”: Written in an intuitive but difficult to decipher method. Singing the song causes one to lose all their teeth.
20	Steel Sword	“Backbiter”: Super flexible sword whips around and stabs user upon a thrust.
21	Glass Dagger	“Trophy”: Various internal facets capture the pained images of everyone who’s touched the dagger.
22	Iron Sculpture	Four iron shapes. In the darkness appearing as people with their hands up in the air. Light shown on them and they noisily collapse.
23	Pit Trap	“Vore”: A soft dirt hole in the ground. A pit of acid at the bottom. Claw marks, blood stains, and loose fingernails embedded in the walls.
24	Mural	A person smeared across 60ft of wall. The silhouette can be clearly read from either end. They are screaming.
25	Preserved Vivisection	“Scattered”: A person vivisected into seven glass sagittal sides. The organs still beat with life. The eyes still move.
26	Skeleton	“Inseparable”: Fifteen skeletons sewn together with steel thread into an incoherent blob. Half the threads are loose, the other half pierce bone.
27	Food	A wonderful brothy umami gelatin, perfectly preserved in an airtight iron pot. Laced with perfectly hidden glass powder. Will shred the insides of eaters.
28	Mirror	“Age”: Warped mirror depicts subject aged and ugly.
29	Iron Mechanism	Wind up clockwork box. Produces an ungodly loud clap of thunder that will deafen anyone nearby at a random interval.
30	Glasses	Produces an effect of vertigo and the sense that one stands before an endlessly deep precipice.
31	Cloth Blindfold	Lidless eyes painted on the outside. Wrapping around one’s eyes makes one see ghosts everywhere. If they see you seeing them, they’ll try and possess your body.
32	Essay	A political treatise. Instructions create a self-fulfilling prophecy for governmental corruption.
33	Porcelain Mask	“Greed”: A grinning obese face with a bird-beak nose. When worn allows one to smell money. When removed steals the wearer’s face.
34	Obsidian Collar	An internally spiked collar. Like a Chinese finger trap. Wearer in constant pain, can’t sleep.
35	Spell Scroll	Casting causes chronic body dysmorphia and desire for self-mutilation.
36	Fancy High Heel	A comfortable-looking shoe. A hidden pressure-activated blade in the heel stabs a bone stiletto through the foot. The blade branches out in a tree pattern, preventing it from being removed.
37	Candle	A candle in the shape of a smiling woman. Wicks on the head and both hands. When it burns down the expression contorts to one of total agony as she melts.
38	Poem	A strange collection of consonants in a offbeat rhyming scheme. Reading it out loud gives those just out of distance the impression that you’re saying something horrible about them.
39	Carpet	A white carpet of intricate geometric patterns. Touching it with bare skin gives the impression of newborns’ hair.
40	Metal Sphere	“Nightmare Box”: Unlocking puzzle traps user in a nightmare dimension indefinitely. Can only be opened from the outside.

The Glasses of the Underdark

The Lost City of Glazz'gibrar was the marvel of the underworld. The Glass-Eyed Armies of the Spider Queen were the nightmare of denizens above and below, subjugating her majesty's enemies to their terrifying will.

But the economic riches of Glazz'gibrar was not in jewel or silk, medicine or adamantine, as the other deep cities of the elves were. Instead, its advantage was found in the beauty and versatility of glass. The products of its glaziers were the marvel and horror of all the world - its goods having been found as deep as the Mantle Baronies and as high as The Moon.

Most legendary among these creations was Black Glass, a substance whose mirror-sheen allows access to the Plane of Forms, allowing practitioners to change the essential nature of things.

The glaziers of Glazz'gibrar were held in high esteem and dread responsibility. Those found to have left the city were to be executed on the spot and their bodies incinerated that their dead lips never speak. In all the city's history not one glazier is reported to have escaped...

Of course, that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Especially towards the end.

BLACK GLASS

• Used in the creation of Black Mirrors, astral lenses, hollow-eyed soldiers.

Principally used in the creation of black mirrors: allowing access to the Plane of Forms (also called the Astral Plane). Often there are curses and traps placed upon such mirrors to prevent intruders from accessing it, such as the creation of evil doppelgangers, chirality curses (rendering all food and medicine poison), or vacuums to horrible voids.

Those who gaze into a mirror of black glass are rarely unchanged. It was used by the powerful to curate and trim their very beings by suppressing those aspects of themselves they liked least and amplifying that which they desired. In this way they made themselves more powerful, more beautiful, but also with more hubris.

Black glass has a terrible effect on the narcissistic. Unchecked alteration of one's soul and body invariably leads to monstrosity. The abandonment of 'undesirable' parts often leaves one predictable and vulnerable, similar to how a lack of pain can lead to infection. It also required discipline: withdrawal could lead to a snapback of suppressed traits, producing radical personality and bodily shifts.

~~~~~

Black glass is also used in composing Black Lenses, which have been used to make ocular devices from telescopes to spectacles. These lens do not refract light, but rather Forms. Things viewed through them seem more true than the thing itself, and reveal their true natures in way that normal light might conceal. 

From this is was learned that the planets and the Moon have names. Titles that they gave themselves, and each other - fearful, terrifying names...

~~~~~

The Spider Queen had a class of enforcer who replaced their own eyes with black glass. It is said that these Glass-Eyed Soldiers had no souls, having had earthly fear and disobedience purged from their bodies in terrible rituals.

Their glass eyes were expert at detecting hidden things. They could sense heartbeats from up to 100ft away underground, or pick out the sheen of a single diamond-thread hair out of a lush groom of silver. Even stone didn't halt their sight. They could sense out traitors by micromovements on their faces and had royal authority to punish those of disloyal disposition.

Ultimately, Black Glass was the undoing of the monarchy. So-called perfection caused resentment, and provided opportune weakness. Cruel repression fostered rebellion among the nobility, and allowed the Unremembered Conspiracy to ultimately undo the city. Even the conspiracy itself, though, was the product of Black Glass - smuggled pieces used to suppress the memories of would-be rebels, forming them into code-activated sleeper agents, so that even the Glass-Eyed Soldiers couldn't sense any wrong.

STAINED GLASS

• Used in entrap and utilize souls in physical form.

It is a common error and perpetuated myth that jewels were used to capture souls. In fact, it is stained glass - the principle component of the Magic Jar spell.

The glaziers of the Deep City produced many incredible works in stained glass. The malleable nature of it made inserting soul-stuff into various objects an easy matter. Golems, soul-spun weapons, life jewels, stained-glass windows - all invoking an existential immortal fear. All a reminder of the tremendous power of the ruler.

~~~~~

Stained glass golems hold the conglomerate souls of potential hundreds. These creations act as archetypes of the class of people in which they're founded. If they share a common culture and set of ideals, the golem will tend to act somewhat unanimously. Should very different pieces of stained glass come together, the golem will tear itself apart, more than likely along with everything else nearby.

The most famous of these golems was derived from a line of the Queen's royal executioners, called The Stonecaster. This being was tasked with throwing deemed criminals from the high cliffs onto the Wheel of Pain just so, impaling them upon the spokes so that they would slowly suffer and die over weeks or potentially months.

By JucchiShepherd

A number of famous art pieces have been made with Glazz'gibrar Stained Glass. There is record of them still.

• The Cup of Queens supposedly contains the souls of every royal of the Spider Queen dynasty. Sipping from the cup is said to bequeath the drinker temporary knowledge of the Power Words, but also a frenzied cruelty.

• The Kettle of the Mead of Poetry, while largely made out of a meteoric iron, contains crucial pieces of Stained Glass. The blood of poets brewed in the kettle will produce a red mead that grants divine inspiration in the arts.

• The Glass Hair of Arkiril, a wig made of thousands of fine stained glass filaments, is said to hold the spirit of the Queen Amathia's Eternal Consort.  Any wearing it become possessed by the spared poet-lover. Those whose bodies he deems unworthy are driven to suicide. His songs could cure any disease, and seduce any heart.

• The Stained Glass Window of the Five Elven Kings is said to contain all the knowledge of creation within its fractal designs. The Arch-Conjurer Holdo is said to have studied and mastered the window's secrets, allowing his conjurations to become permanent and his illusions real.

FORCE GLASS

•  Used in the creation of security devices, weapons, phylacteries, and armor.

Perfectly translucent. Completely invisible. Impossible to destroy or even nick once set. Melts at extraordinarily high temperatures, far beyond those that can occur on this planet.

The transition point that Force Glass becomes malleable is at approximately 15 million degrees Kelvin - approximately the temperature of the interior of the Sun. Such temperatures are extraordinarily dangerous when unconstrained, capable of producing thermal explosions equivalent to nuclear bombs.

To mold or spin the glass you will need a Star Forge - a contained star itself, trapped in or siphoned through extradimensional space - in order to melt the glass down and make it malleable. To say this is extraordinarily dangerous is a grievous understatement - not only does one risk utter annihilation by mismanaging the forge, it also risks interference from divine entities and heavenly enforcers, should they discover this happening.

Star Forges are kept in very inhospitable places: underground, close to the earth, isolated, and consecrated to keep divine interlopers away. It is kept within magma chambers, crafted by glaziers with special protections against the heat, trained in the patient and careful magics needed to manipulate the melted glass in other dimensions.

Force Glass is highly radioactive. Those who wield it as weapons or armor inevitably succumb to pain and death. Mere minutes of exposure will guarantee death within weeks. To have tools capable of killing gods, though, it has often been said to have been worth it. Force Glass weapons will slice through anything.

~~~~~

According to the Basalt History, The Sorceress Gilthi encased herself in a prism of force glass to protect herself from death. Her spirit would linger within, while her body was preserved for all time in a locked state.

A radical anarchist whose name has been lost plunged a heart-seeking dagger of force glass into the prism. While initially it failed to penetrate fully to the body, the nature of glass itself, with its imperceptibly small molecular movements, has doomed her. The dagger will eventually pierce her heart, and dispel her enchantment thus, though it will take billions of years to happen. This doom has driven her mad.

Though, she was probably already a fair bit mad to begin with.

More Wizard City GLOG Classes

BUREAUCRAT BRAVO

You are a bad person. A very, very bad person. You're also a bureaucrat, with an intimate knowledge of the oppressive machine. You know how to twist the knife of semi-annual audits, how to make rich and poor alike squeal in confused agony, how to replicate the wheels of Hell itself.

You know how to game the system. It's War Tax Season. Time to get to work...

Every Template: +2 to Bureaucracy checks.

Starting Equipment: Official Stamp, Registered Ledger, Pen
Random Starting Skill [d3]: 1 = Printing, 2 = Sleight of Hand, 3 = Brown Nosing

A Red Tape
B Pen is Mightier, Machine Mind
C Hit List
D Bureaucratic Creep

Red Tape
Any time you witness a creature breaking a bureaucratic rule, or failing to adhere to an established formality, even a tiny bit, you curse them with -1 to AC and all rolls. For this you must be able to speak and write. This is not cumulative.

Pen is Mightier

In your hands pens, pencils, quills, and other writing implements are effectively Medium Weapons, though they cannot be wielded in both hands.

Machine Mind

Reading, processing, or appraising written materials requires 1/10th of the normal time for you.

Hit List
You maintain a ledger that continually updates with the last 10 words spoken by the last three targets of your Red Tape effect. If you should lose this ledger, it will fail to continue to update after 1 Day. You can make a new one with 10 Hours of work and 100 Spellgold, though it starts as blank.

Bureaucratic Creep
Your Red Tape effect is now cumulative, and can be used multiple times on the same subject, though not more than once per round. Each use requires a different broken rule or failure to adherence.

GREY GNOST

You are the silence of the grave, the stalker in the darkness, the hunter of misplaced books. No student or professor shall dare question your authority, no intruder shall reave unrestrained.

You are a librarian.

Every Template: +1 to Stealth.          Every 2 Templates: +1 Book Casting Die

Starting Equipment: Truncheon, Grey Robes, Gas Mask
Random Starting Skill [d3]: 1 = Informational Sciences, 2 = Tracking, 3 = Literature

A Book Meld, Blunt Force
B Book Casting, Librarian's Chains

C Silence
D Incorporeal

Book Casting Die: As MD, but can only be used to cast spells from books or scrolls.

Book Meld
You may freely move through and occupy spaces with books or bookshelves. Attacks and spells against you have a -4 penalty while you're within a full bookshelf (tiny ones grant no protection).

Blunt Force
You get a +1 bonus to attack and damage with blunt weapons, such as Truncheons, maces, blunt-headed crossbow bolts, and staffs.

Book Casting
You may cast spells from scrolls and books as a Wizard does with the Book Casting feature. You use Book Casting Dice for this function.

Librarian's Chains
You have two additional quick draw slots and two additional inventory slots. These slots can only be filled with books, scrolls, or other written materials.

Silence
2/Day: Area with radius 30' around you becomes silenced. No sound may be produced within this effect for 1d4+1 Minutes.

Incorporeal
Twice per day you may turn Incorporeal like a ghost. Lasts for 3d4 Rounds. In this form you can attempt to possess a living creature. Target must Save, or you get full control for as long as you're incorporeal. If still possessing the target at the end of this ability's duration, you get ejected out, causing 2d6 damage to both you and the subject.

KRILL MAN

KRILL MAN. MAN OF KRILL. YOU ARE KRILL. KRILL ARE YOU. 
BOTTOM OF FOOD CHAIN. TOP OF DANGEROUS.

Every Template: +1 HP, +1 to STR, DEX, INT, and WIS Scores.

Starting Equipment: 10,000 Krill, Chum Bucket
Random Starting Skill [d3]: 1 = Forming Thoughts, 2 = Having Feelings, 3 = What Is Love?

A KRILL MAN
B Faster Krill Generation
C True Shapeshift
D Hardened Krill

KRILL MAN
You are KRILL MAN. Your power is proportional to how many krill you are presently composed of. In order to sustain and multiply your krill you must provide yourself food and water.

You are a shapeshifter. You can squeeze through spaces no smaller than a krill (quite small!). You must, however, maintain a general humanoid shape, even when squeezing.

For every HP lost you lose a proportional amount of STR, DEX, INT, and WIS at a 1:1 ratio. Your Strength, Dexterity, Intellect, and Wisdom do not recover normally, instead remaining proportional to your HP.

You recover 1HP per day, provided you've eaten one meal (usually algae) per HP to recover.

Faster Krill Generation
You now recover 2HP per day, though your food requirements are the same.

True Shapeshift
You may now take on any form you desire, no longer being limited to humanoid shape.

Hardened Krill
You now lose 1 STR, DEX, INT, and WIS per 2 HP lost, instead of per 1 HP lost.

SPEED WIZARD

YOU HAVE A NEED. A NEED FOR SPEED!

Which is to say: you need drugs. You're a junkie. Congratulations. You need wizard drugs to live, or else you explode. That's not a figure of speech: you will literally explode if you don't get more wizard speed. Enjoy the rest of your inevitably short life!

Every Template: +1 Magic Die

Starting Equipment: Five Used Needles, Handful of Unknown White Powder
Random Starting Skill [d3]: 1 = Depravity, 2 = Begging, 3 = Alchemy

Perk: You don't need to sleep.

Drawback: You must consume one drug doses of stimulant every day (Wizard Speed is the most common of these). For every dose you fail to take you permanently gain one Doom Die.

Doom Die: Whenever you cast a spell, roll an additional die for every Doom Die you have. This die is used purely for the occurrence of Doom (not Mishaps), and has otherwise no effect on the casted spell.

Cantrips: 

1. Take a deep breath. You can smell drugs within 30ft. You can identify which drugs they are if you've taken them before.
2. Spin around in a circle really fast to hover a few inches off the ground. In this form you can be pushed like a hovering disk.
3. Smoke something. You can tell where it's been during the past day.

Mishaps:

1. MD only return to your pool on a 1-2 for one day.
2. Take 1d6 damage
3. Random mutation for 1d6 Rounds, then Save. Permanent if you fail.
4. Immediate withdrawal: halve movement speed for 1 Day.
5. Immediate withdrawal: halve INT for 1 Day
6. Immediate withdrawal: halve WIS for 1 Day

Doom:

1. You explode in a glorious shower of drug-laden gore and tissues. Deal 4d6 damage to everything in a 50ft radius and leave behind 2d10 doses of Wizard Speed.
2. Anyone who has any drug addiction will find your flesh irresistible and attempt to eat and/or smoke you. Your flesh is effectively Wizard Speed.
3. You combust into a sparkly grey smoke. When inhaled produces the effect of Wizard Speed.

Speed Wizard Spell List:

1. Absorb Toxicity*
2. Absorb Potion*
3. Blink*
4. Haste*
5. Slow*
6. Rot Teeth
7. No Sleep
8. Remote Parabiosis
9. Highest High
10. Blur

Emblem Spells
11. Flesh to Drugs
12. Time Dilation

(*Spells not listed below can be found on the communal GLOG spell document.)

[Rot Teeth]

R: 50' T: One creatures or Self  D: 0

Targets must Save at a [dice x 2] penalty. On failure, you make the target's teeth fall out. Bite attacks of targets now deal 1 damage on hit. If they dealt 1 damage before they now deal no damage. Targets without a bite attack are stunned for 1 Round and lose 1d4 Charisma.

[No Sleep]

R: Touch T: [dice] Creatures or Self  D: [dice] Days

For [dice] Days, the targets of this spell receive no penalties for not sleeping, and automatically recover their MD regardless of getting sleep.

[Remote Parabiosis]

R: 30' T: [Dice] Creatures  D: [sum] Minutes

Target may Save if unwilling. On access or failed Save, target's blood stream becomes linked to yours. They share any positive and ill effects that you presently have due to poisons, drugs, or other blood soluble effects. Additionally, all participants take one damage per Fatal wound any others receive.

[Highest High]

R: Touch T: Self  D: [sum] Hours

For [sum] Hours, any numbered effects received from taking drugs doubles. So too for withdrawals. If 3 MD are used, you do not suffer any negative effects from these drugs for the duration, including withdrawal.

[Blur]

R: Touch T: Self  D: [dice+1] Rounds

You become super blurry and difficult to pin down. For [dice+1] rounds, all attacks against you have a [sum] penalty to hit.

[Flesh to Drugs]

R: 30' T: Creature or Self  D: 0

Target flesh-composed creature must Save or part of them explodes into wizard drugs. On failed Save, the target's following limb is turned to 1d10 drug servings (1d6): 1. Left Leg 2. Right Leg 3. Left Arm 4. Right Arm. 5. Torso 6. Head. 

Requires 1 [dice] to use against targets of 2 HD or less. 2 [dice] for one between 3-4 HD, and 3 [dice] for 5-7 HD. 4 [dice] for 8+ HD.

[Time Dilation]

R: 0 T: Self  D: 1d4 Rounds

This spell requires 3 MD to use. Immediately take an extra 1d4 Rounds. Everything else in virtually frozen in time.