Twilight City - The Artifacts of Imperium

Part 1 - Twilight Pomerium

Within the Pomerium lie seven sacred artifacts - divine tokens which guarantee the dark imperium. Each is guarded by a cult devoted to its stolen god's worship, and there are traps - means to confuse and eliminate would-be thieves. Should all the items be stolen, the city shall be fated to fall.

The Kettle of the Mead of Poetry

Lost with the destruction of the Deep City of Glazz'gibrar, and supposedly still contained within the ruined Glass Palace. None dare approach the city, for during the civil war a terrible monstrosity was unleashed that remains there still, warding the city from tomb thieves and those who seek to reclaim the monarchy's treasures.

By boiling the life-blood of poets within the kettle the red Mead of Poetry is made. This drink grants pure inspiration to all who consume it, allowing them to effortlessly produce fantastic works of art and song. Historically, only those of the royal house could partake in this great pleasure.

But now the royal house is extinguished, and their taboos with them. Their responsibilities have passed to senators and archpriests.

The Matriarchs of November will pay three queens' ransoms to those who can retrieve the Kettle and bring it back to the Twilight City.

The Black Altar of Unveiled Reality

A relic pilfered during the Evocation of the forgotten Dead Dreamers of the Deep. It is a cube of black marble, strikingly lucid in appearance and perfect in dimension. Those who have touched it can always find it once again, no matter what reality they inhabit.

It is cold to the touch, distinct, unforgettable. Nothing can replicate this exact feeling. In all realities it exists, waiting to jar the initiated from their dreams and reawaken them. To those who have touched it, if ever they are in doubt of their verisimilitude, may seek out the Black Altar in whatever realm they exist and touch it again. It will always feel the same, and it will always cut one out of the false world.

The Black Altar is kept within the Senate Chambers, and is hence protected by the Imperium Blackguards, who carry no weapons but hide one unbreakable adamantine fiber among their top-knots to bind and garrote those who threaten the sanctity of the Pomerium. Senators take their oaths of office while touching the stone, and begin each session by doing so to ascertain their reality. In this way they are all protected from giving away their political intentions to dream spies and mind skinners.

The Bisecting Sword

Wielded throughout the ages by Blackguards and Paladins of legend alike, this profusely heavy horse-cutting-sword requires tremendous strength and skill to wield. However, its strikes never fail to cut its target in twain. Lower from upper, left from right, soul from body - those struck by the sword are always split in perfect halves. It's said that the sword was wielded by the first mythic hero of Elves to split night from day, man from woman, the land from the sea, and heaven from earth.

It is kept in the Temple of Jabber-Dal, adorned with many mirrors, that from any point within one may see nearly the entire interior. There it is guarded by the Manxome Cult, whose members split their souls in twain. Each cult member carries two bodies: each holding half of their personality and memory. Most often, one is fearsome, hedonistic, and violent, while the other is demure, calm, and rational - like Hyde and Jekyll.

The Sword is kept with eleven identical false copies, each one bearing a Curse of Instant Death upon those who would manipulate or touch it. Only the High Priestess of the Manxome Cult knows which Sword is true, and she is split into a coy liar and a cryptic truth-teller.

The Mill of Hell

A modest-sized mill bequeathing to its users limitless oil, flour, and phosphorus. It takes the strength of six laborers to grind it. Pilfered from the Deep Dwarves, whose god gifted it to provide sustenance and comfort for many.

The oil produced by the mill has many uses: cooking, lubrication, illumination. It burns bright and long, and effectively protects hair while giving it a beautiful luster. Foods cooked in it are delicious and filling. Even a cup of the flour, when cooked into a flatbread, is dense and high in sustenance, keeping a strong adult fed for a week. It is the panacea for armies on the march, and an ambrosia to the hungry. The phosphorus glows in the dark, and has numerous military, agricultural, and alchemical applications.

If it has so many good uses, then why is it called The Mill of Hell? Because all of these substances are extraordinarily flammable. In irresponsible hands it has been the cause of countless deaths, by flame, asphyxiation, or explosion. Legions of mill-turners and priests have perished in fires related to the Mill, not least because the grinding of the mill increases this risk all by itself. It is a greed trap: turn the mill too fast and it will spark, setting everything alight.

Thus, within the Temple of Hell's Mill there is the ever-present steady tempo of drum and pipe. To the somber beat everything is extracted with careful consideration by priest-laborers constantly skirting the line of maximum production and total annihilation. There are special roles within the Temple: the musicians whose ability to keep tempo, the Conductor-Priest who commands the speed of all things, the strong men and women who grind the wheel, and those who guard against sabotage.

No flames are allowed within the Temple. It is a place of total darkness. To the drow this is not an inconvenience. It is, however, very cold. The Temple is guarded by large cultures of Brown Mold. Any flame brought into its dark passages will be swarmed and snuffed out by the icy fungi. The priests of the temple know which passages to traverse and which to avoid, and how to step among them without causing the Mold to attack. Infested skeletons patrol the halls, and there are many hidden pits and mold-seeking phosphorus traps.

The 360 Idols of the Dark Sea Monks

Each Idol grants a unique blessing to those who pray before it on its corresponding day of the solar calendar (there is no effect if it's not its day). Such boons are typically minor things: to have the wind at your back the entire day, to come upon unexpectedly minor wealth, to be blessed in cleaning. The blessings on the solstices and equinoxes, though, are by far the more powerful.

Some days will grant Curses, though these are far more rare and typically minor. One exception being the Idol of 169th Day (July 15th), which kills those who pray upon it. This idol is prayed at regardless, either in respect of ritual sacrifice or for those seeking a quick death.

Source

The Temple of the Dark Sea Monks is guarded by a terrible curse: those who enter it cannot leave. They are forever compelled, body and spirit, to that place. The monks within are peaceful and serene, knowing of their everlasting fate. When they die, they become ghosts that wander the grounds, then as shades as whatever remnants of memory fade. Eventually they sink into the stones, becoming one with the Temple and creating its distinct shadow-imprints.

The monks are maintained by food and water tossed over the threshold by the lay-volunteers at the entrance. Supposedly, this is how the idols were stolen in the past: tossed out by those within, fated to never exit themselves, and destined for whatever punishment the remaining monks could muster.

The Idols are arranged in a rotunda, as the degrees of a circle or compass. There are noticeably little gaps in the arrangement. Six Idols have been stolen over the millennia. Once by the great Thief Mandolin, twice by the Traitor-Priestess Whose-Name-Is-Burned, and thrice again by unknown looters during the Nightmare-Razing of Glazz'gibrar.

The most powerful of these Idols is the one for the Omitted Leap Day. Brought out once every hundred years, it is said to have granted a 24 Hours Time Stop to those who prayed to it - they would inherit this leap day, being the only ones affected by time during this period. Unfortunately for the Monks, this one was stolen in the most recent razing and its whereabouts are unknown.

Beauty

A silver painting commissioned during the reign of Amathia, Second Spider-Queen of Glazz'gibrar. The painting is constructed so that an image of perfect beauty is formed in the reflection of the observers' eyes. The image is indescribable and fleeting. Those who gaze upon it know what they've seen but forget its exact nature, and so must continually stare to have it remain.

By Linggo

It is guarded within the Temple of Beauty by the thirteen-eyed beholder Azrith'rir, who is perpetually addicted to the painting. All thirteen eyes fixate upon a more perfect version of itself, being deeply in love with the image. It constantly mutterers sweet nothings in dead languages to woo it. Azrith'rir will protect Beauty with its life, and will cruelly enchant those who linger too long before the painting with ironic acts of self harm.

Those who become obsessed with Beauty inevitably become Beholders as well. Azrith'rir is merely the oldest of these - Beauty having warped its body over years to accompany more means to view the painting. None are exactly sure what Azrith'rir was before Beauty twisted its form. Perhaps an Aboleth, a medusa, a proto-elven wizard, or a prince of oozes.

The Keystone of Kin

A relic acquired from the sack of the Walled Forest of Kin, and preceding Evocation of their goddess of springs. It was said in legend that as long as the Keystone remained within the Forest its walls would forever repel invaders. This was evidently true.

It's said that the Keystone is a fragment of the Spring Goddess's mind. From it flows a crystal water containing the memories of the foundation of the world.

Water carries memories. One must know its language, Aquan, to read them.

The water lingering in underground aquifers is old and pure. It has travelled long and slow in its journey. The memories in these pools produce lucid thoughts, like watching video of something happening as opposed to trying to reconstruct it from memory.

The Halls of The Keystone Temple are long and twisting, full of Romanesque arches and somber refectory pools. Within the thoughts of visitors resound and echo with tumultuous noise. To not give way intention one's thoughts must be excessively shielded.

Its priests train themselves to completely silence their thoughts, acting purely on bodily instinct, that they may move throughout the Temple quietly. They drink directly from the spring, filling their minds with the music of eons past that it resonates in perfect clarity within the temple.

Historically, these priests were used as assassins against enemies of Glazz'gibrar, external and internal. They trained to be empty vessels of death: instincts honed to impossible speed, never surrendering information to the enemy - quiet, invisible, and deadly as nerve gas. The elves called them the Deadly Silence, for entire Houses would quietly perish without so much as a peep. Sometimes undiscovered until the bodies were rotting and the smell began to bother neighbors.

The Twilight Pomerium

At the heart of the city of November lies the space where gods come to sleep and die. It is a cold, dark place, protected by layers of the dead and their caretakers. The mute gravesmen-lictors who patrol the pomerium wear the insignia of axes to denote their religious right to kill defilers. All others must surrender their weapons and spell foci. Soldiers and provincial administrators are not permitted.

Its circumference is marked by gravestones containing the bound souls of honored drow priests. On them are written the oaths that the priest took in life - fearsome, ascetic, inhuman. ("This priest never consumed anything which cast a shadow for sustenance"; "This priest was never seen by mortal eye."; "This priest mummified their living flesh without assistance.")

Examples of cippi.

They also contain the warning: these elders guard the Pomerium still, whose boundary this demarks. Their shades remain within the stones, guarding against trespassers. Should the eye upon the stone detect weapons or means of magic, their wraiths shall emerge to ward and defend the district. These wraiths do not have eyes. Instead they sense by passing hand over visitor, draining some modicum of life even in cursory examination. Best to have turned back before then.

Or to have come up with a clever means of hiding them.

There are exceptions, sometimes, to the rules. If the armies of November have slain or charmed a god then the soldiers will be permitted a triumph through the pomerium, dragging its corpse in chains or in honors to the cold slumbering depths. Its leader, for having conquered divinity, momentarily becomes one, and becomes immune to all laws of the city for a period of one week.

~~~~~

Of the armies of November the most feared are their priestesses. They are masters of Evocation - the military action of stealing the tutelary gods in siege, sack, or raid. The loss of the blessings of a tutelary god bring utter destruction and ruinous fate upon strongholds and cities. It is the fall of empires.

In times of the Spider Queen, these gods were lured out of their cities and shrines by trickery, craft, and charm. The enemies' shrines were stolen in the night and its priests murdered as false caretakers. The gods were seduced and led through confounding underground and dimensional mazes, strung up upon adamantine webs for the Queen, and by proxy her Venomous Goddess, to poison and devour.

The sustenance of these gods was used to birth thousands of godlings over the millennia.

But since the Spider Queen was overthrown, her House annihilated, and worship of the Venomous Goddess outlawed, a new practice has formed. Instead of devouring these gods they are given reverence and rest. They are given cults of sleepless followers, endlessly devoted to prayer.

This has only strengthened their capacity for Evocation.

I kind of imagine it looks something crazy like this.

The Great Red Dragon and the Beast From the Sea
William Blake, 1805-1810

~~~~~

But why are the priestesses of the drow so skilled at Evocation?

The drow are, quite simply, far better at religion than anyone else. They do not compromise and they do not hesitate in religious matters. They have resolve. Whereas the elites of any society will nearly always barter and compromise with their religions to maintain their positions of power or comfort, the drow have no such allusions. Their priestesses and leaders will proudly die and suffer torment to prove their devotion. What their enemies will do for their gods the drow will unhesitantly do ten-fold. The clerics that rise but once in a generation on the surface will be present in legion among the Twilight Armies.

Despite the stereotype and the ancient myths, the gods do not hate the drow. On the contrary, they love the drow. They love their fanaticism, their will. They love the dread respect that the drow give them, and they love their devoted art. The artisans of the drow spend centuries honing their craft in contemplative sleepless solitude - a hundred lifetimes of mastery channeled into charming one particular deity. Gods rarely receive such flattery, even from other gods.

All prejudices against the drow ultimately branch from this jealousy - this insecurity that your gods love them more than you, despite all efforts. Before the religious might of the drow all are like an unfavored sibling - a Cain before a righteous Abel. After long years of propaganda and generational hate, this core reason has largely been obfuscated to petty xenophobic bigotry. People have forgotten why the drow should be feared.

The drow have not forgotten, though. They are well aware of their strength. They simply bide for time, researching and infiltrating their future foes, formulating stratagem to steal the worlds' gods once again...

Finders Auction

Two compacted city blocks down Wailing Blvd. from The Portal of Screams in Wizard City, past the scream-squatters and the drug-addled gentlemen and the occasional confused criminal from the future, lies The Finders Auction. It's a soggy, sagging building whose ramshackle and haphazard architecture is accentuated appropriately by the piercing screams echoing down the boulevard. Luckily, business is handled on the street, and only Finders agents need peril themselves inside the interior.

The Finders are a bounty hunting agency. There are no membership dues (hence the dismal state of the building), and anyone may partake in the bounty auctions at their leisure. Patrons of the agency will contract Finders agents to find particular things or people, who then outsource this task to bounty hunters via auction.

The lowest bidder gets exclusive rights to the bounty for a given period of time. If the time expires the rights then pass up to the next-highest bidder for the same time period, repeated ad infinitum. Should someone bring in bounty they do not have rights to, payment shall go to the rights-holder.

Finders agents traditionally take an inverse-proportional cut of the reward money - the lower the cost to the patron, the bigger cut they get. Hence, a certain trust is valued in Finders that don't embezzle their bounty hunters.

WHAT'S ON THE BLOCK?

d12	The Patron Requires A(n)...	But...	Auction Price Will Be Starting At...
1	Cute Exotic Pet	It must be ALIVE… and UNSPOILED!	A high-quality ham sandwich.
2	Joke. A good one.	Nobody’s seen one of those in years!	Five 30-gallon drums of unshelled peanuts.
3	Criminal from the Past to document for historical purposes.	It must be pristinely clean!	Tutorrage for four years in the topic of the Bounty Hunter’s Choice.
4	Cursed object in order to entrap and disqualify their sibling from the family fortune.	It can’t be second hand.	Five years worth of rent.
5	Secret Meeting Place	This thing is the object of a dramatic Butterfly Effect disaster. Expect visitors from the future.	A very nice and expensive dress suit.
6	Trade Secret, Dubiously Acquired.	Those things are historically very slippery.	A lifetime supply of waffles.
7	Nice Shrub	Those things have suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from shops everywhere!	University Tenure
8	Specific irresponsible warlock who skipped Suit Court.	Not that one. They already have that one.	Use of an indentured hireling for no longer than 1 year.
9	Murder Weapon. (That is, a weapon which has been used to murder someone.)	It must be delivered into a dungeon.	250 Spellgold
10	Lost cat.	This thing just became the hot new speculative currency.	500 Spellgold
11	Human footstool of precise dimensions.	A dragon is attempting to hoard all copies of this thing.	1000 Spellgold
12	Scientific Samples!	The patron definitely misspelled the thing they wanted, and the Finder doesn’t realize the error.	2000 Spellgold

The New Old Gods

(A follow-up to the Everlasting Summer campaign setting. Musings of worldbuilding and considerations for a possible sequel - something of a mix between American Gods and Lovecraftian horror for the modern era.)

Something happened at the dawn of Man. An intelligence, sophisticated and cruel, birthed itself from itself, becoming something different than what was before.

The Old Gods are forces of nature: Sun, Fire, Ocean, Evolution, Reproduction, Time, Consumption, Violence... They were immortal and dispassionate, living long eons slumbering and gorging, still as glacial cores. Their mutations and decisions occur on the scale of galactic rotations. They are worshipped ignorantly by animals and people alike.

The New Gods were made by Man. Compared to the Old Ones they are weak petulant things, doomed to live and die in the blink of an eye. Their destiny is tied to Man's rise and inevitable extinction.

A'AQUR

Boreas, The Nuclear Winter, The Winds of Death

He is a god of mankind's particular ecological apocalypse. Like the ones that came before him he is a thing of duality. The nuclear winds and the nuclear winter. The hot and cold fronts. 

A'aqur demands human sacrifice.

Its cultists hate and fear their god, but they respect its power. They dare not speak of or summon its avatars, for they know the cost. Cults of A'aqur dissolve and reform every 47 Years as the Northern Wind demands more sacrifices. Its leaders tend to be parents and grandparents: patriarchs and matriarchs of old Houses who groom their female children to be suitable sacrifices - conservative, ignorant, and innocent. They do not practice what they demand of their youths.

LEVIATHAN

The Fumbling State, The Blind Listener, Hecatoncheires

The State is a blind, fumbling thing, constantly seeking to ascertain the objects of its domain. It knows not the extent of its body: its people, its resources, its land, its thoughts. It must listen to its whispering priests that it may come to know itself. It must compartmentalize and conceptualize, ever-stretching, ever-listening, until its inevitable singularity.

Leviathan seeks to grow more eyes, more ears. It needs more priests: bureaucrats, quantifiers, software engineers. It needs technology, and most importantly data: cameras, GPS tracking, satellites, surveys, statistics, facial recognition, social media.

Its cultists work as nonpartisan governmental bureaucrats, or nowadays in Big Data tech. They occupy positions of power that are not subject to political sway. They are difficult to discover and even more difficult to uproot. Their God has a righteous monopoly on violence, or so they believe. Police, members of the military, lawyers, and religious figures all act in service to Leviathan, often without consideration.

THE ELECTRIC GOD

The Black Key, The Light in the Dark, The Chemical God, Prometheus

It is a God of luminescence but it is always depicted as pitch black. Delved from deep underground, from the blood and bones of the earth came the means to dispel the darkness. It lives in everything that is electric: the generators, the fluorescent bulbs, the power lines and pacemakers. It is life, it is light, and it is lucid. It is the opposite of everything that is dreamlike and predatory in the dark. It is a god with disciples and with enemies.

Theorized to be the oldest of the New Gods. Its presence is found in shadow, cast on painted-wall of ancient cave-homes. Where once it was fire and hearth it now lives in electrical grid and radiator, in appliances and televisions. It is comfort, it is safety. It is, as its cultists say, humanity.

Its cultists are everyday working class people: tradesmen, nurses, technicians, janitors, truck drivers, operators. Those who maintain the shrines and offer daily prayers. Their devotion is frequently fanatical and evangelical. They will lay down their lives for the cult and try to recruit others in their social circles. They fear, above all, losing what amenities they have. When the lights threaten to go out, when the price of gas shoots up, when the internet dies, they will mobilize.

ZIN

The Fruit of Cain, The Red Mask, The Heart of Darkness

Scholars have long held contentious the idea of pure ideological or religious violence. It is almost always complex - a product of community, identity, economic, secular and political interests. So rarely is it distilled to purest form - a hateful and cruel bloody mask made bare for all to see.

Even a false idea cynically given lip service can gain power beyond the control of its creators. Though the reasons of conflict remain complex, among its perpetrators there are true believers. Zin is this phenomenon given name and form: the essence of religious and ideological violence spawned from all other reasons.

Zin is paradoxically a most alien thing, despite its proximity and dependence on Man. Its agents are incomprehensible to the typical person: try to imagine the mind of a true believer or a zealot. In most cases, Zin is perpetuated by unwitting peddlers cynically justifying violence for their own ends.

Its cultists are divided into two lots: those who are aware of Zin and those who aren't.

Those who aren't are arms dealers, politicians, clerics, and trolls: those who feast on the battlefields, suckle on the teats of wartime funding, and unwittingly sew the seeds of discord. They unknowingly worship for selfish reasons: money, power, entertainment, self-affirmation.

Those who are aware are far more dangerous but far more rare. They are strange, elusive, and monstrously competent at magic and violence. They often become Wizards: isolating themselves in towers and practicing misanthropic science.

HEOL
(Pronounced: Hole)

The White Rabbit, Son of Man, Soul of the Old Gods

For long eons the Old Gods did not have souls. They had no need. Humanity changed that. The side effect of having pattern recognition in an evolutionarily developed brain is that it over-fires: apophenia. From this birthed a god that spawned the souls of all gods: the neverending hole.

It is apophenia itself - the finding of patterns from the truly random. A relic of the development of the human mind. That which needed rationalization for Everything. It is the personification of all Old Gods - from Zeus to Tiamat to the Jade Emperor. Because it is personification, it is their literal souls. Indeed, Heol is the very notion of the Soul itself. For what is a soul but a personification without substance?

Its cultists are conspiracy theorists, ghost hunters, and religious figures. They are wielders of metaphor and men-at-arms of the post-truth order. They gather on online message boards and corners of the dark web to disassociate reality from itself, diving down rabbit holes in perpetual endless fall. Those who succumb to the plunge become mad, like drug addicts.

(World of) Horror Campaign Structure

Lately I've been interested in the game World of Horror by Ysbryd Games. It's an early acesss single-player horror adventure game based around Lovecraftian themes with a heavy influence from Junji Ito: it's the 80's, you arrive in a small fishing town in Japan, someone is trying to awaken an Old God, and there are an usually high number of people without faces. 

I've been interested in it not so much for the game itself (although it is interesting and fun, if a bit flawed), but for the way that it structures a horror campaign. It seems to take the format one would traditionally see in a board game like Arkham Horror or the like: with adventures essentially being a series of random skill checks that occasionally branch to multiple endings through a series of menus.

And while the game's two main mechanics - selecting options in menus and combat - aren't very translatable to tabletop (well... you could, but they'd be boring), there are some auxiliary features that would be cool to see in a horror adventure.

Like this. This menu in-game is DOPE.
Taken from the game's main website.

So, if I had to steal some ideas from this game to implement in a tabletop horror adventure, this is what I'd take.

#1: CHOOSE THE FORM OF THE DESTRUCTOR

In World of Horror, you (the player) get to choose at the beginning which Old God is awakening. Each one gives different random encounters and a unique penalty to your actions in-game. You know what's coming, but you don't know how. The how is the mystery. You are essentially given The Answer, and now you must find The Question.

It makes the stakes of the mystery clear right at the beginning: solve the mystery or the bad thing happens.

In a tabletop context, it would allow players to start drawing connections immediately between various events. It makes them constantly ask the question: how is this thing related to the bigger thing? Is this strangeness attributable to the Old God or not?

#2: FIVE INTERCONNECTED MINI-MYSTERIES

World of Horror doesn't do this great itself, as in-game each mystery is functionally completely independent (edit: 99% of the time) and you can only work at one at a time. In tabletop, we have no such restrictions: mysteries can be endlessly interconnected, multiple cases can be worked on simultaneously, and you can find clues for other mysteries within unrelated objectives.

But I dig the format: five mini-mysteries. Each one maybe a session or two in length. Each culminating in some kind of clue, providing up to five clues that point towards the ultimate challenge.

I like the idea of forming a conspiracy corkboard. Each of the five mysteries starts as a rumor: either given to the players at character creation or introduced in the very first segment. Rumors must be investigated, which eventually point to people or places, which prompt further investigation.

#3: PROGRESSION OF EVIL

In short: for every good action there is an equal and opposite reaction. There is a time limit on these mysteries. Every so often something gets worse: riots downtown, a portal opens in the woods, a horrible fog sweeps over the town, federal police block off the roads, etc. This can either be directly related to a completed mystery or totally random.

You see this a lot in cooperative board games like Arkham Horror, Dead of Winter, and Shadows Over Camelot.

For the Everlasting Summer, I have a table for this function. Whenever a mystery is resolved, some new doom menaces the town, rolled from a list made by the uncompleted mysteries.

#4: MAKE A COMMON  HORROR TOOLSET

Generate a list of common events and encounters you can use for nearly any exploration/mystery horror game you've got. Make them creepy. Get used to running them. Get the descriptive language down to a tee. Reuse them for multiple games or reruns of the adventure.

The idea is that the awakening of the Old God is like putting a fire under a decaying log: all the cultists and the monsters and the mad scientists and crazy prophets are going to come scurrying out from under the woodwork because they all innately know that the end is nigh. Society is breaking down, and in the nihilistic power vacuum all the misanthropic things are taking over.

#5 MODULARITY

The advantage of having a modular design to your adventure is that you can DIY and crowdsource all over it. Don't like a mini-mystery? Swap it out. Add endless encounters to the ever-growing horror democracy-style table. Automate it.

P.S. Note:

Because the game takes so much influence from Junji Ito, a good deal of the horror present is visually-based. It's about looking at really messed-up art straight out of someone's nightmares. This aspect is quite difficult to translate into tabletop, not least because describing horrific things balances on the knife's edge between silly and ineffective, but because simply describing some of these monsters can be difficult in and of itself.

The Old Courthouse

 A landmark of the slums of Wizard City, the Old Courthouse is a broken monument to the bygone era of justice and equity. It was the site of The Last Jury Trial of Wizard City, and since the implementation of the Secret Police has fallen into disrepair and disregard.

Since its abandonment, it has become a home for disaffected youth and a mecca for the orphans of wizard couplings. These orphans have a special relationship with magic, inherent to the transgenerational legacy of stuffing weird spells in one's brain. A number of developmental issues tend to emerge, including various degrees of preemptive brain maturation, enigmatic growth spurts, mutanous osteogenesis. and elevated frequency of Tower Syndrome.

The Courthouse is not without its institutions, however. It is the primary hangout of the Dirty Rascals - the children's criminal gang led by the ruthless 12-year old Sam (see epithets below). It is also the site of The Rascals' Court, in which disputes among wizard children are settled since none of them can get justice or recompense from the Secret Police or the Suit Courts without an adult.

These children, though never having seen any real court proceedings, have still ended up emulating it within their own orphan-gang society. It's not uncommon for issues among the children to be taken to The Rascals Court, presided over by the Girl Who Knows All The Rules - Sam (also known as 'Her Horror', 'Sam Wham', and 'Big Mean Gavel Girl'). Trials and hearing go about much how one is accustomed in a soap opera crime drama: with virtually no pretrial arrangements such as discovery and disposition, with a superabundance of surprise witnesses, and with absolutely no restrictions on entering the well.

The Jury is composed of fellow orphans (or if the guilty party is an adult, abducted people from the nearby neighborhood). The Court Reporter is typically the youngest member of the gang (and is just learning how to spell). The Bailiff is an eleven year old child's brain inside of a two-ton XK-9000 Bruiser Mo-RON battlesuit. The Prosecutor is always prepared.

ORPHANS

d12	Their Nickname Is...	Their Parents Were...	Someone Wants Them For...	Their Sole Possession Is A(n)...
1	Squid	Two secret police persons, who have no idea who each other or the child are.	Repeatedly insulting their religion.	Pair of oversized shoes.
2	Shortsword	The trophy wife of a powerful businessman and a guy who sells shampoo door to door.	Being a gambling cheater prodigy.	Spell that conjures small throwable rocks into their hands.
3	Mouse	Indefinitely jailed for violation of hat dress codes.	Burning down a street food stall.	Heirloom scabbard that is one half to a legendary sword.
4	Flue	Wizard furries.	Being in the wrong time at the wrong place.	Flash Bomb.
5	Digs	Really more interested in getting a dog instead.	Stealing a critical component of a doomsday weapon.	Snowglobe that is actually a scrying device for an important governmental building.
6	Thorn	Obliterated in a timeline paradox of their own creation.	Being witness to a quintuple homicide.	Picture of their loving parents with a strange shadowy figure in the background.
7	Damn	Steeve. This clone came out a little undercooked.	Their beautiful flowing hair, which some rich heiress intends to scalp and make a wig out of.	Old rusty trumpet.
8	Jules McKinley IV	Killed violently and dramatically by a cruel villain, fueling a lust for vengeance that will no doubt resolve itself dramatically.	Being the long lost heir and sole survivor to a tremendous fortune and/or royal dynasty.	Strange die with 13 congruent sides.
9	Glory	International spies executed for their role in smuggling industrial espionage.	Making a pastry made of children.	Cool-looking scar that glows in the dark.
10	Killy Kill	Ghosts, somehow...	A very delicate task that requires tiny tiny childrens’ hands.	A pet alligator that snarls at liars.
11	Lil’ Red	Slain by the orphan’s own hands.	Their blood! It holds the cure to a plague from the future!	‘Broken’ pocketwatch which ticks when danger’s nearby.
12	Dog	A college student and a professor in the Venoms Department..	The dimensions of their body, which would make the perfect doorstop for their foyer.	Mean Attitude