The Meebs of Djelu

Keith wrote something about 'allodial systems of inheritance/fealty' and I briefly parsed it as 'colloidal fealty'...which led directly to this post.

The recent southward expedition of Messrs Heartley and Roundtree returned to River-Town bearing a number of unusual floral samples, a living specimen of a giant four-horned death-ibex, and an amazing account of the explorers' time spent in a small, previously-unknown settlement known as Djelu.

Situated in the center of a small caldera, Djelu is simultaneously an above-ground town, a subterranean complex, and a series of canals and tunnels running between the two.  The reason for this strange construction is simple: the residents of Djelu are almost entirely slimes, puddings, and jellies, those bizarre amorphous creatures which slop about like great whopping amoebae.

The learned Doctor Hornapple has been telling us for years - chiefly in his controversial monograph My Bones Are Shackles: Amorphous Intelligences and Cultural Bias - that the scum-sucking wall-sliders we recognize as 'slimes' may in fact be possessed of at least an animal-level intelligence, comparable to rats or cats.  Now, with the evidence provided by Heartley & Roundtree, if it is to be believed, then at least some specimens of these genera are blessed with human-level intelligence, or something approximating it.

Within Djelu, innumerable subspecies of puddings and slimes not only coexist peacefully but cohabitate, interbreed, and work together on community projects such as repairing collapsed tunnels and carving out new canals or 'buildings' (typically hollows in the rocks).  While we outsiders know each phenotype by a handed-down etic designator such as 'black pudding', 'green slime', etc, the residents of Djelu refer to themselves all as 'meebs' or 'meeblings'.  Very few meebs can speak in a way that we understand, but they communicate with one another via a combination of shapeshifting, pheromones, and tactile empathy.

The meebs told Mr. Roundtree that their ancestors came to Wampus Country from another world [1], crashing to earth in a meteor ages ago; for his part, Roundtree suggests that the caldera is not a volcanic remnant, but the remains of the blast crater from a massive collision event sometime around the fall of the Owl civilization.  Meeb faith and tradition suggests that their cosmic purpose is to share knowledge with other species: "When there is ignorance below, the slime must descend from the heavens."

Heartley and Roundtree and their entourage spent a fortnight camped at the edge of Djelu, trading simple goods with the meebs and learning to communicate with them via hand signals.  As the touch of some meebs is at best painful, and at worst fatal to humans, very little cultural exchange was achieved over such a short time period, as the meebs speak most clearly when they are touching you.  And what a quandry!  A race of gregarious chatterboxes who touch to speak, and yet their touch kills.  Mr. Heartley wrote in the Gazette of the experience, and he posited that due to the need for the social reinforcement of tactile telepathy, a lone meeb encountered in the wild may be literally hungry for attention and desperate to give passersby a tragically fatal embrace of brotherhood.  Many meebs seemed enamored of the very concept of human comedy; Heartley goes so far as to suggest that a well-delivered joke might stop a slime or ooze in its slithering tracks as it attempts to understand the humor [2].  While meebs can be found throughout the land, it seems that distance from Djelu, and other meebs, is detrimental not only to their mood, but also their intelligence.  The oozes found in distant mountain caverns are the meeb equivalent of slavering savages relative to the genteel and culture Djelubians [3].

The explorers were shown, briefly, a metallic stone bearing meeb historical pictographs, something referred to as the Agar Codex.  Interpretation of the writing and artwork of wholly different species is something of an art form, but if the Codex is to be believed, the meebs were granted dominion over Djelu during the early days of Man, under the reign of the Peacock Throne, when the wise Huxt of Koz parcelled out the caldera, signed peace treaties and trade agreements, and named the meebs' leader an ethnarch under the contemporary empire.  It is for this reason most meebs refer to Huxt as the Father of Puddings, with great respect and bowed pseudopod.

To this very day, the meebs of Djelu are ruled by a hereditary king, currently one "Doobleep Kamoob", a massive lavender-colored pudding [4].  Beneath King Doobleep is a byzantine overlapping hierarchy which determines which meeb answers to which; color and viscosity are not sound indicators of caste, as centuries of interbreeding and shifting political relationships (not to mention fashion and social prestige) have ensured that only a native even has a hope of understanding who is whom [5].  Some of the younger meeblings actually attempted to hold a vaguely humanoid shape while the expedition was in town; perhaps, in time, we will see bipedal meebs gracing the streets of frontier towns as they wander forth to seek their fortunes and find this legendary thing called 'whiskey'.

Social forces within Djelu include the Church of Liquidity, a zen-like faith which encourages its followers to "go with the flow", and its counterpoint the very conservative Cult of Conformity, which demands its faithful take the shape of their surroundings (such cultists are known as 'cubes', a parallel to the human term 'square').  A number of more recently-budded meebs have demonstrated interest in swearing additional fealty to foreign lords and becoming vassals elsewhere in Wampus Country.  Curiously, while all meebs are hermaphroditic, from a cultural point of view Djelubians acknowledge seven different genders, some of which are adopted only during the holidays.

In the months and years to come, it is hoped that other brave explorers will return to Djelu and continue developing a relationship with the meebs, including rekindling the old trade agreements.  No, I don't know what we'd want from them, either, but it's the principle of the thing.


[1] - according to subsequent research by Dr. Hornapple, this homeworld likely sits in the northern sky as part of the visible nebula known in Wampus Country as the 'Stellar Marches'.

[2] - Rule: Telling a joke to an ooze of any sort forces the slimey thing to make a Save vs Paralyzation (bad puns apply a -2 to the save); if the meeb fails the save, it pauses for exactly one round.  This only works once, sadly, as a meeb who has failed to understand a joke becomes enraged and murderous in a fit of low self-esteem.

[3] - "Djelubian" is the accepted scientific and cultural term for a resident; some civilized meebs refer to their backward, underdeveloped cousins as "Djelibabies" to highlight their infant-like intellect.

[4] - King Doobleep may be treated as a 6HD ooze.  He has developed an inordinate fondness for bagpipe music after watching Mr. Roundtree's cousin play; possibly Doobleep thought that young bagpipe player was doing something erotic with a tartan-colored meeb.

[5] - Plus, not to be racist or anything, but all green slimes look alike, etc.  Until the communications issue is surmounted, meeb society will remain a frustrating puzzle.


MEEB NAME/WORD GENERATOR
Roll d20, d3 times.  Add an "i/e" type syllable to connect parts if you wish.

1  Oobl
2  Teep
3 Bloop
4  Nub
5 Joob or Joobl
7 Glop
8  Deep
9  Loop
10  Toob or Toobl
11 Blob
12  Heep
13 Ooo or Ooz
14  Doop
15  Yub
16 Oosh
17 Smoop
18  Foop
19 Poop
20  Ek or Ex


OOZE-THING GENERATORS!
For making and naming new ooze-things with which to terrorize and surprise.

First word in name of ooze-thing
1  green (chartreuse, sallow, sickening, ochre..)
2  black  (midnight, shadow, penumbral...)
3  deadly (death, doom, accursed, forgotten...)
4  corrosive (acidic, ravenous, face-melting...)
5 gelatinous (jiggly, wiggly, bouncing...)
6 stunning (paralyzing, blinding, deafening...)
7 other color (brown, white, dun...)
8 material (crystal, stone, iron...)
9 body component (blood, brain, flesh...)
10 abstract concept (time, hate, war...)

Second word in name of ooze-thing
1  pudding
2 slime
3  ooze
4 jelly
5 sludge
6 cube
7 algoid
8 muck
9 goo
10  scum

Roll a random ooze-thing name to replace the next boring old green slime in your encounter table and either just re-skin the stats or tweak to reflect the new nomenclature.  "Gods above and below, it can't be...it's an immense bloodsludge!"


Yes, yes, I know you want to play one of these, you can stop shouting.

Not So Different A World

This is the tale of a man who stepped into another world, and found it pretty much the same as his own.

Last night I guest-GM'd for some friends from work.  They play 3.5 with rotating GMs in their current campaign, and asked if I'd be interested in coming by for a one-night-only kind of deal, anything goes.  How could I refuse?  It's the next day, and I'm exhausted from staying up extra-late then getting up extra-early to do in-law yardwork (the best kind of yardwork!), but here's a go at a summary.

Some background on this... The group in question leans CharOp, numbers-focused.  Of late the campaign had been very "that one's dead, next encounter please" in pattern.  There was an overarching motivator underlying things - something about the potential return of an evil god.  There was a recent plot-thread under the current GM that involved some dragons, some elemental stuff.  And, most importantly from my POV, some of the players were talking about how they wanted "more roleplay" and a little less combat-train action.  You can imagine how my ears perked up.  I agreed to come in and deliver something that was a little different, maybe a mystery or investigation, maybe some kind of heist or something, with heavy roleplay.   I warned them that I do funny voices - and this is a group in which not all the players are comfortable speaking in-character, and some folks are accustomed to spending more time tweaking their sheet than thinking about what their character might do in a situation.  In addition, the milieu as they were playing it involved what I came to call "magical Costco", whereby they had easy access to any magic item from any book and could just buy the damn thing between sessions if they had enough gold (which they usually did).  Oh, and PC-on-PC violence was not uncommon.  Mixed alignments, petty feuds ending in spectacular arcane murder, that sort of thing.

Now, let me be clear - there's nothing wrong with the way they've been playing: high power, high magic, combat focused, numbers focused, all of that.  Zero things wrong with it... IF they were all happy.  Which they were not.  So my agreement to come run for them was not intended as some sort of badwrongfun pooh-poohing, or "teachin' them kids how ta play right dagnabbit" or anything like that.  I had already experienced plenty of old-man heartburn at work every time they referred to their "toon" and what sort of "mobs" they'd dealt with the previous week (I've no doubt some of 'em started doing it intentionally to make me cry).

Here's how it went down, and my observations during and afterward.


THE START
I gave a little impromptu speech about my playstyle, how I wasn't concerned about the minutiae of the 3.5 ruleset, and what I was setting out to do with the session.  I wanted to be clear about things - I didn't want folks pawing through books all night, arguing about rules, any of that crap.  JUST PLAY YOUR DUDE.

The party members were all 15th/16th level, with an ass-ton of gold and carrying enough assorted magical items to level a city.  Not kidding.  Everyone in the party had a bag of holding or a handy haversack to hold their crap; almost all of them have the inborn or acquired-from-a-worn-item ability to go invisible (including Greater or even Superior), to blink, to teleport, or several of these combined.  About half the party was of evil alignment.  (This is me crying)  Last night's PCs consisted of:

Kael, human sorceror/arachnomancer
Hairtrigger McMurderpants, human rogue
Shade, halfling monk/assassin/shadowdancer?
Wocka Flocka Seagulls, bard/dirgesinger
Munthrek, pyroclastic dragon disciple
Dash Shieldwell, something inexplicable for the Tome of Nine Swords (warblade?), carefully built to do all sorts of Captain America-like shield-throwing.

Three players were absent from the session due to other stuff going on, so the party didn't have its primary spellcaster (a wizard/incantatrix or something specialized in orbs, a pixie sorceress, and a half-minotaur frenzied berserker killeverything.)


BACK UP A STEP: THE PREP
I prepared a hook to get the group somewhere cool - The City Behind The Moon, basically a fairyland resort/market-town in space, and a mini-setting I'd been messing with mentally for some time.  (Yes, it's part of Wampus Country, but I didn't want them tromping around the main area, after all...)

I lightly prepped for a heist-type mission, along with five NPCs: a go-between, a patron, and three suspects in the investigation.  All in all about a page of notes and a couple of sketches so I could properly explain the folding nature of the city when the time came.  I readied Secret Santicore to use the castle and shrine maps therein, as well as the deadly plants; I also reviewed the turtle-themed map Ian had given me so I could use it to improv one of the suspect's hideouts.

The only other thing I did was finish up a d100 table of "fairyland weirdness" that I could use on-the-fly to generate appropriately odd/silly NPCs for the location and stuff they'd see on the street.  The table has three columns, and generates results like "a camel", "in a tuxedo", "riding a pennyfarthing bicycle".  You get the idea.

I was expecting a six-hour session, but a late start (lots of book-flipping and loot-buying and crap...apparently this is normal for them) and some odd pacing got the best of me/us as things went on, I think.


HERE WE GO
Tired of having no actual HQ ("At sixteenth level?  For serious?" I said), Kael starts the session by blowing a wad of his superfluous gold and buying the tavern/inn combo they'd been staying at.  Awesome - that's going to continue to be real fun for them.  We start the action two days post-buyout, with the PCs straightening and rearranging this dumpy tavern.  Munthrek is in the store-room, shifting boxes, and comes across something rather strange - an oblong, relatively flat object, covered in colorful gift-wrap, suspended in the air.  There's an envelope tacked to it which bears his name and those of his (in town) companions, written in Draconic (or so it appears to the dragon disciple, anyway).  Within is an invitation to lunch with the Curatrix Scintilla Umber, and the implication that they share an enemy (which the party rightly presumed to be the overarching evil-god-plot guy).

The party tears the wrapping paper from the object, revealing an emerald mirror in a bronze frame.  The rogue checks it for traps while everybody agrees its some kind of portal; then, while looking for an activation stud or command word, the mirror suddenly falls to the ground and shatters in a bajillion pieces, tossing little green shards all over the floor.  The metal frame also clatters down.  (In typical PC fashion, the rogue says "I didn't do it" without missing a beat.)  The emerald fragments start to melt and scoot around, merging and growing along the floorboards and up the walls, and the frame stretches and starts to turn into a gondola.  You can perhaps imagine the chatter during this bit; it was appropriately paranoid.  As the gondola finishes resolving itself, the bottom clack-click-clacks down into a stairwell, and the party hears the footfalls of somebody coming up.  It's this guy:

Festivo, the jolly Falstaffian boatman, greets the party and explains that they really ought to get into the boat before the rest of reality fades away - at this point the "greenness" has almost completely enveloped the room.  They do so, and next thing you know they're drinking beers with this dude as he poles them through a vast, horizonless Green that eventually darkens to black then becomes an obvious starfield.  The party is now on their way to the City Behind The Moon, the crossroads of nine hundred worlds.  Wocka the bard (who has a tendency to ask for a bardic knowledge check every thirty goddamn seconds, I'm not even kidding) recalls hearing that phrase - the City Behind The Moon - as a euphemism for "far-off fairyland" in children's stories from his youth.  Surely it can't be a real place?  Festivo assures them that it is quite real, albeit founded on the stuff of dreams.

In the distance the Moon is finally seen - an immense platinum plate hanging in the sky, bearing a smiling face.  A tongue lolls out of the mouth - an infinite bridge heading down into the dark vastness of space; who can say what's at the other end?  (The PCs don't ask.)  Festivo pushes the boat around the Moon and into the docks.

The City Behind the Moon is difficult for me to describe without a sketch.  Imagine huge square plates hanging in space, connected by edges; some are horizontal in orientation, some vertical.  They all move as though hinged - like a deconstructed cube (but with more 'faces').  Each square contains various buildings with matching-colored shingles, so if someone says they live in Viridian Square, you know which zone they're in; there are buildings on both sides of each square, as gravity is localized.  I was able to draw it well enough that they got the idea, especially once the squares started slowly moving.

The party disembarks and is ushered through customs, where they learn all about the rules of the city.  They are greatly pained to have to put their bags of holding and such in lockers, as they cannot bring them inside.  Serious PC heartburn (although the players grokked it), which is totally fair.  They get a glimpse of the gendarmerie - hulking exosuited guys who will arrive rapidly after any law is broken, etc.  Railroady?  Yeah, maybe, but I had to set some guidelines.  As tourists from a meat-realm, they were issued twelve-hour visas.

Several on-the-street encounters occur as they walk toward their rendezvous, strictly flavor stuff.  The table ends up giving me a mix of silly and disconcerting which I hope got the 'wonder' bit across.  Anyway, it didn't take long for the party to arrive at the Gallery Infinite, ostensibly one of the greatest collection of paintings in the multiverse.  The butler (a two-dimensional shadow dude) shows them in and they sit and have lunch with the Curatrix, Scintilla Umber - a practically-porcelain lady of obvious faerie extraction.

The Curatrix lays the poop on them - the evil god dude has agents in the City, so she suspects, and she thinks they may have been involved in stealing a painting from her.  The painting in question - unseen by the Curatrix - was being brought in via ship by her procuring agent when the poor agent was gutted and the painting stolen.  The painting itself contains great magical potential and power - which is why she acquired it in the first place!  Who knows what EvilGod(tm) could do with such an item!  As the crime occurred outside of city limits in the vastness of the void, the gendarmerie are of no use.  This, she explains, is why the Curatrix needs men such as the PCs - heartless murder-machines who also hate the same evil-god and who will be out of town in less than a day regardless - as a catspaw. In exchange for their aid, the Curatrix will give them new information about the evil god's return blahblah (actual content to be determined by whoever DMs next).

After some chitchat, the party agrees.  The Curatrix gives 'em the lowdown on the three people she suspects might be the culprit.


THE CAPER

I was explicit in telling the players they could literally do whatever.  Break in to steal the painting back.  Try to con or browbeat a suspect.  Gather information.  Kick in the door.  Or say 'screw it'.  I would roll with whatever they did.  The players discussed for a bit which suspect to tackle first?

Baron Czlzgaht, a hedonistic drow swordsman (using Shinto Shrine map from SS; Czlzgaht's servitors are spider-faced gorillas dressed like footmen)

Jasper & Gnitwick, a two-headed dragonblooded turtle dude who runs an extraplanar import/export concern (using Terrible Towers of the Treacherous Terrapins map from Ian; Jasper & Gnitwick employ a cadre of turtle guys)

Mazzle Kappulsham, a green-skinned faerie lady and professional rival of the Curatrix; Mazzle is equally famous for her art collection, beautiful garden, and series of lovers (using Castle Santicore map from SS paired with whatever deadly plants seemed useful at the time, also from SS)

As they're discussing what to do, I make it clear out-of-character that the culprit is not pre-written, and I was randomizing who the culprit was right that second by rolling a die.  Turned out the villain was Mazzle, the faerie; and that's exactly who the PCs wanted to investigate first!  Maybe I wasn't going to run short on time after all...

The idea was to pretend to be art collectors to gain entry to the castle; while some of the party talked with Mazzle, a second invisible contingent would have run of the place and could search for the painting (which they knew was probably still inside a magically-sealed protective transport tube).  As a codicil to the plan, Dash (the warblade) was going to attempt to "interest" Mazzle using his massive throbbing Charisma.  Do they sound like your players yet?

Well, since they took the con approach, I didn't end up needing to attack them with evil plants - at least not on the way in.  Mazzle led them through the outer courtyards herself ("Please don't step off the path"), so the giant venus flytraps and vines-with-eyeballs and all of that didn't get a shot at attacking a PC.  There's an extended scene where we're jumping back and forth between talking about magical art with the suspect and team two tossing the upstairs.  In the end, Mazzle was far more interested in the half-dragon Munthrek than she was the earnest Dash (again, randomized), and those two sneak off for a tryst off-camera.  Meanwhile, the rest of the party runs through a Scooby-Doo montage of the PCs trying to search an entire old, crumbling castle as quickly as possible without breaking anything or arousing suspicion (this ended up involving several Search rolls, which seemed a very 3.5 thing for me to do at the time).

Shade, the halfling shadowdancing assassin (who's STILL invisible) ends up finding the shipping tube in the icebox next to a talking head of lettuce.  After some communications issues (this is bound to come up when half of you jackasses are invisible at any given moment), the PCs make off with both the painting AND the sentient head of lettuce ("You'll be a star at my new tavern...").

They hightail it back to the Gallery Infinite, where the Curatrix confirms it's the right painting as she pulls it out - a very simple child's fingerpainting.  This is supposed to resonate back to all the previous talk about the painting potentially having great power blahblah imagination dreams yadda yadda wankery.


AFTER THE CAPER, IT'S THE AFTER-CAPER

Happy ending?  Not quite.  Before they leave town, the PCs want to screw with the drow, as after several conversations around town regarding the Baron, the PCs are now pretty sure that 'hedonist' really means 'pedophile and slaver'.  Dash Shieldwell - who, by the way, always refers to himself as "the Hero's Hero, Prince of the Sword" - can't let this stand.  The party heads to a cigar bar not far from the Baron's complex and starts talking crap about him in hopes of it getting back to him (quickly, I guess).  In the meantime they run into a giant severed head with a glass dome for a skull; his brainpan is full of smoke and he has hookah attachments.  It was weird.  Dash ends up spending "seven years from the end of his life" to buy a small bottle of the most expensive thing in the place, Afterlife Cognac from Gehenna, in order to look like a high-roller.  Eventually, despite the giant prawn bartender's attempts to taunt the drow from the rooftops, the drow doesn't come out.  So the PCs go to him.

They knock on the drow's door after using makeup and disguise magic to make the halfling and the rogue look like little kids.  It's like 'To Catch A Predator', and it was getting really strange.  Anyway, the Spiderilla footman lets them in, challenges are thrown around, and Baron Czlzgaht strips off his samurai robe to reveal a second set of arms.  Take a second to process that if you have to: four-armed drow samurai.  And I continue to maintain that it's no sillier than what the PCs were.

Now, killing a sentient is illegal in the City, so the PCs have this plan whereby Kael, the arachnomancer, will use his spider-kind command ability to tell the spiderilla servitors to kill their master - the idea being that the drow bites it and the gorilla-dudes take the blame, with he PCs aleady out of the complex when the gendarmerie show up.

Well, it worked.  Because dice, that's why.  They dominated the servants while combat was ongoing, and Baron Czlzgaht met his maker while his butler choked him and his gardener stabbed him repeatedly with pruning shears.  (Note to self - I have a real "scissors" thing going on lately, need to knock that off or figure out why it's in my brain).

At this point, it's like two in the morning and at least two of us are past Spousally-Approved Depature Time, so we wrap it up; the party hauls arse back to the docks and departs the City Behind the Moon.


LESSONS LEARNED so far

1. A nice reminder that good food helps make for a good game.  Those ribs were awesome.
2. Players are players.  The game doesn't matter, you'll get the same combination of laughter, stupidity, bravado, smack-talk, and dick and fart jokes.  Edition shifts do not impact this whatsoever.
3. Initial playstyle exposure may indeed influence you for life.  The player of Shade, the assassin, started with AD&D, and he was a very deliberate, cautious, even paranoid player.
4. Random tables are awesome.
5. Using improv to run a session makes you look really smart if the players are accustomed to DMs who plan every little thing.  I'm not smart, I'm a decent liar.  Big difference.
6.  A mix of stupid and faux-fantasy names feels appropriately D&D.  No, seriously - scroll back up to the PC list and tell me that assemblage of names doesn't look like a FLAILSNAILS party.
7. I will crow this one 'old-school victory':  "So, wait...basically you always set things up so that you, the DM, have literally almost zero idea what's going to happen in that session."  "Yep."  "And you don't plan out changes to the status quo based on the characters, you just let the NPCs do whatever they do and stuff, and whatever happens happens, for good or ill."  "That's right."  "Holy fuck, that's some kind of brilliant insanity or something."   You have to imagine that response with a "kicked my brain in the balls" kind of face.  That player's supposed to run the brand-new-start-at-the-bottom campaign after this one, and he's been asking me questions about "sandbox" and "world in motion"...


IN SUMMATION THE NEXT DAY
I have no idea what the next DM will do or whether the heroes will be able to stop the return of the Huge Evil Death God, but I know one thing: they now own a bar and run around with a talking head of lettuce, and that means my work here is done.  PEACE!  /drops DM screen

Scenes from Wampus Country: Not What They Seem

A pair of Boxtoon mercenaries attempt to infiltrate a troupe of flying monkeys.

Sir Bors of Nutnibble, one of the few legitimate paladins in Wampus Country.

Attempts to get a serious horse-cult going have met with some resistance, despite Princess Fancyprance serving only the finest lemon meringue pies at all of her get-togethers.

Nobody solved crimes as expertly as Inspector Hogass.

"Look, darling, I think I've been very understanding about this whole curse thing.  But the fact of the matter is, I have to get to the office to close the Andersen account, and this is a deuced inconvenience."

We Gotta Kill This Guy

Creatures that are "only hit by silver or magical weapons" are all over every edition of D&D. They're really scary to a low-level party who can't hit them, as they should be. But it's also a bit of a cheat, and a bit samey. You need silver to hurt a werewolf, fine, that's right from the inspiring legend - but you also apparently need an enchanted blade to even think about hurting a wight. Which is material! I could see maybe a "mundane weapons do half damage due to the unearthly nature of the creature" or something...I mean, a giant can't drop a tower on a wight and kill it unless you assume 'massive damage' then counts-as-magic or something.

This came up, sort of, in game last week. Faced with a creature they believed required magic to assault, the PCs were at a bit of a loss and were attempting to strategize a way of minimizing risk while still going after the ghostly thing. Then it occurred to me that the PCs knew the ghost's name. That's a pretty special thing to know, either from a 'laws of magic' point of view, or from a fairy-tale one. Magically speaking, knowing the name of a thing ought to give you some sort of advantage over it. Storybook-wise, this wasn't "some ghost-thing on level one of the dungeon", it was a former person with a name and a (presumed) backstory who had already escaped one conflict with the PCs. Didn't he deserve a little more?

In the end, I went with a quick-and-dirty consecration of weapons to the destruction of the ghost; an expansion of what we used is below. The other way to go would have been to give the creature a fairy-tale-style weakness - perhaps he remained as a ghost because of a particular sin or something, and confronting him with evidence of that sin would banish him or make him vulnerable ("Look upon this mirror, vain spirit!" or even "And yet your son, thought dead, lived! AND HERE HE IS..." followed by cackling and ghost-go-asplodey or something).


CONSECRATION and DEDICATION

A cleric may, via consecration, dedicate an item or weapon to the destruction or downfall of a single named creature which is immune to mundane weapons. Although the process varies from faith to faith, the principle is the same - weapons are blessed, prayed over, etc in the hopes that the cleric's patron will smile upon his effort and temporarily make the weapons proof against the beast. The process, being faith-based, does not always function, however. All clerics are presumed to have some knowledge of this ritual at first level.


PERFORMING THE RITUAL

A single consecration of this sort takes the better part of the day. Typically the priest will place the weapons to be consecrated in some sort of basin (if using liquid ingredients such as blood or holy water) or coffer, or perhaps a hole in the ground for the earthier hippie-type druidic faiths. These items are then covered in holy water, animal blood, fresh water, oils and unguents, or whatever is appropriate to the faith, along with an admixture of other ingredients - perhaps iron filings, a drop of serpent venom, the spittle of an honest man, hot peppers, liquified gold, etc. This combination is then prayed over for hours as the cleric calls upon the Gods to dedicate these few material items to the destruction of the creature in question; in some cases the priest may also promise things to the deity in exchange for this meager favor. Brief visions are not unknown during the ceremony.


A single concentration affects only a handful of items - three daggers, two clubs, ten arrowheads or bullets, or perhaps one shortsword (or appropriate combinations of same).


DID IT WORK?

Add together the below modifiers to find a percentage chance that the dedication worked properly; GMs may elect to roll once for the batch, or for individual items within the batch ("...maybe this one last bullet will actually work!"). In all cases the dedication must be toward the destruction of one individual creature - not "those darn things in the cave".


Base chance 5%
True name of creature known +10%
Piece of creature present and used in ritual +5%
Level of cleric +level%
Target is of opposite alignment to Deity +10%
Materials used in ritual are particularly fine +1-5%
Cleric has very recently done great stuff for the church +1-5%
Cleric swears an oath to accomplish something awesome/dangerous in near future +1-5%
Ritual performed at proper altar of the faith +5%
Extra worshippers (real ones, not hired chanters) praying over the batch +1% each


Weapons successfully blessed by this form of dedication count as silver or magical as necessary for the purpose of being able to strike the creature. Dedicated weapons remain so for twelve hours. If an expedition to slay the creature is mounted and it fails (for example, if the creature cannot be located, or the party flees) the dedication fades.


Obviously, at higher levels, this all becomes rather moot.

The dashing but thoroughly eeevil Phineas Gristle, a dapper phantom in league with the Necronauts.

Some player notes & doodles from the hunt for Phineas.  The orangutan pictured is a PC.

Soldiers of Wampus Country

I figured it would make sense, and be a fun little exercise, to pull some pics and illustrations representing different character classes in Wampus Country.  For this one, we take a look at Fighters - specifically the professional sorts, rather than bar-room brawlers and frontiersmen, which we'll get to later.

Some of the fashions and nomenclature current amongst professional soldiers in Wampus Country are handed down from Grandpa's War.  In fact, some mercenary companies trace their lineage back to that conflict, and have kept the same name - Third Heavy Cavalry, etc - passing it from generation to generation, even if the once-honorable group has descended into brigandry and monster-hunting in the years since.

A veteran expeditioneer relying on his keen  hearing to avoid stumbling into owlbear territory.

Some mercenaries maintain the old ways of the knight-errant, fighting from horseback with spear or lance.

Marshal Plimpt inspects his company before leading a raid against the Yellowscale barbarians.

Light cavalryman; his distinctive turban marks him as a member of the  Howling  Sabres.

Always suave and fashionable, veteran warrior Hulbrecht Fontayne is more famous for his romantic conquests than his martial ones.  Coats mimicking his style are widely available.

Sargus Blackburne has refused to let his microcephalic curse impede his career as a myrmidon.

Some of the civilized warriors have taken to aping barbarian styles, such as this sword-for-hire.

Commander Appelbaum of the Mighty Seventh Rifles.

Lieutenant Plumdiddle retired from soldiering and now runs a small chain of chip shops.

General Louise "the Meat-Grinder" Flessen, field commander of the Three Stars mercenary company.

Veteran riflewoman of the Singing Magpies.

Mascot Monday: Dawn of the Sloads

Ian has written of the mighty sloads over at Monstrous Television.

No death-wizard or Necronaut can say with much accuracy what, if any, are the connections between Wampus Country and that pocket of hell and death known as The Bleaklands, but know this: there are sloads in Wampus Country, and they are terrible.

Hidden amongst the thick woods south of River-Town, there stands the Untouchable Fortress, a massive construction of ether-stone which is sometimes invisible, sometimes intangible, and, most of the time, not there at all.  Within the thick walls of the Untouchable Fortress dwell three insidious sloads with designs on all of Wampus Country.  Only one young frog from Frogport stands against them...

THE UNTOUCHABLE FORTRESS
The Fortress is castle-like and surrounded with a secondary wall some thirty feet in height; its ramparts are defended by brain-drained men and women, slaves to the sorcery of the sloads.  Upon each tower is mounted a swiveling cannon which fires crystalline spheres which shatter on impact, releasing d6+1 starving stirges.  Beneath the castle proper lies a maze-like dungeon which is home to the sloads. In addition, there is a large subterranean pumping-station which is slowly bringing fetid cavern-water (tainted with evil, no doubt) to the surface and transforming the area around the fortress into a swamp.

THE SLOADS THREE
Whether they came via the Bleaklands or some other means, it is known that these three sloads are evil incarnate, and have turned their back on any nobility their species may once have maintained.  Each is more sadistic than the next, and all three are cruel wizards, ever-perfecting their dark arts.  Although few have seen the sloads in action, it has been suggested that they have the ability to chant in unison to summon powerful eldritch effects.  Each of the sloads has the ability to stand like a man (they are ogre-sized when fully upright), but they often lounge about on their bellies, as their tremendous weight is difficult to bear on their lanky frog-limbs for long.  Thankfully, each sload possesses a hovering lily pad (treat as flying carpet).

Bhood Greentooth (7HD sload with powers of a level 8 wizard) is the leader and 'face' of the amphibious triumvirate; it is he who commands the growing army of vacuous living zombies who are loyal to the sload cause.  Bhood wields a wand of fireballs and wears a torc of protection +2.

Wyz Many-Eyes (6HD sload with powers of a level 5 cleric) is Bhood's vizier, advisor, and sycophant.  Known for the dozens of small eyeballs which have sprouted across his belly and back, Wyz is a devotee of several Chaotic patrons and maintains shrines to both the Horned Baron and the Vicelords in his corner of the dungeon.  Wyz carries a spiked flail +1 and is often accompanied by a horrific, mutated wampus-cat with cobras for teeth.

Ur Mak Kruun (7HD sload with powers of a level 3 wizard) is a hulking brute who enjoys torture and maneating when he's not busy whipping slaves.  Ur wears a massive golden cestus on his left hand which does d8+2 damage and can deliver a further d6+1 shock every third round.  His brothers do not realize that he has secretly been talking with the Web of Darkness about a profitable alliance...even if it means big brother Bhood has to meet a bloody end.

The terrible sloads three, recumbent upon their flying lilypads.

ONE FROG'S HOPE
A young frog of Frogport, one Digby (level 2 frog), stumbled upon agents of the three sloads, and has determined to take their organization down.  But he desperately needs help!  To that end, he has begun trying to build a network of contacts in River-Town and beyond, and taking on small tasks which may net him the resources necessary to mount an assault on the Untouchable Fortress.  He publishes ranting self-financed pamphlets "Evil Wizards Got You Down? Dig 'Em A New Grave With Digby" and distributes them wherever he goes; he has even begun wearing his motto on his clothing.  Most take him for a madman, but no one knows more intimate details of the sload operation than he.  Recently he has undertaken to explore the Terrible Towers of the Treacherous Turtles in hopes of securing allies, after reading in an ancient text of these man-turtles who hunt sloads across myriad worlds.

Digby's crusade vacillates between "destroy all sloads" and "shameless self-promotion".

Magic Bullets

Running a D&D-like game with firearms invites an obvious question: what about enchanted firearms and ammunition? We have enchanted swords, why not magic revolvers? I can hardly blame my players for asking - and perhaps they're also understanding of why I've been avoiding the question.

To me it's a bit of a sticky wicket.  Given that in Wampus Country pistols and rifles are essentially reskinned bows, there probably ought to be enchanted firearms or bullets.  But at the same time, I don't want  things to turn into "who has the biggest plus on their revolver", either.

The compromise seems to be to allow for enchanted ammunition that is situational in nature, or difficult to acquire.  The sort of thing a character may wish to acquire when the opportunity presents, but won't want to waste by loading every day.  More like magic arrows, some with different effects.  And none of this stuff should be available in a store, of course - you should be getting it from fallen enemies, making it yourself, or something like that.

That's the vibe I want to impress into the game; bullets (and other things) are not necessarily magical because some bearded git threw a spell over them to that end; they're magical because of their origin and the care with which they were re-crafted into weapons.  So, to that end, here's a list of things a Wampus native might collect to get made into magic bullets, conveniently (and habitually) organized into a random table.

MAGIC BULLET IDEAS

1 the gemstone eyes of an earth elemental, carved & filed
2 the strange silver nail-file you stole from that fairy-queen, melted down
3 the thighbone of an ancient undead creature, carved & filed
4 wooden bullets made from an old gallows which hanged a hundred innocent men
5 confectionary bullets made of peppermint, with a liquid core of the tears of a newborn baby
6 ancient brick from a fallen temple's altar, carved & filed
7 made from a shard of the shattered sword of a legendary hero
8 a round forged of cloud-stuff
9 bullets made from the housing of that strange metal spaceman who just tried to kill you
10  metal is mundane, but has been melted and re-formed in the fiery heart of a fire elemental several times
11 carved from the chitin of an ancient giant crab
12 a chunk of devil-horn, shaped and polished
13 mud from a magic mud-man pit, placed in a mold and dried at high noon
14 the tiny conical skull of a micro-fairy that just so happens to fit nicely in your rifle...
15 forget buckshot, this shell is full of a witch's fingernail clippings
16 the tooth of the oldest razor-maw in Snollygoster Swamp, stolen while it slept!
17 the promise-locket of a lost love, melted and shaped into a bullet
18 oddly-shaped thorns from the singing rose-bush in the mountain fairy's garden
19 chunk of a captured rainbow
20 bullets of blown glass, filled with the last breath of a dying man

When running a campaign, if we want magic to feel...well, "magical", the onus is on us to maintain that feel.  The tables in the books aren't going to do that for us - in fact, those listings rather work against the magical nature of the items they enumerate.