jacinto – hex culture

June 29, 2019 jacinto Uncategorized

we are hated by the very season

It is very hot and very humid, so here’s some cold stuff. Probably not bad to tack on to Servants of the Cinder Queen if you’ve run it and want some more Norse followup.

In the summer, their abandoned lowland settlement looks like a uselessly beautiful array of nautiloid spun-glass armatures. As autumn turns to winter and the snow-laden winds blow, these structures reveal their purpose as mediums for ice, growing inch by inch into palaces and walls and towers, until at last the city is ready for the vinteralfar to come down from the mountains and inhabit their winter capital.

elvingbeast

Those dreadfully transformed by the light of an elf-raised moon. Their beastly new shape recalls the old, but white-furred and fine-boned, walking as easily on four legs as two. Elvingbeasts are as ravenous as they are cunning, reining in their hunger only in service of the vinteralfar. They become larger and stranger with age: limbs, eyes, and jaws splitting and duplicating, fur growing long and filamentous like hyphae, body slowly losing symmetry.

elvercorpse

A vinteralf can raise the human dead to harrow their enemies. They impart corpses with a surrogate soul of moonlight, a wriggling maggot-thing of silvery cinder. It fills the contours of its old self, a new cast of an old mold, sharing mannerism and memory, but retaining its own hungry purpose. The fire that burns in the elfcurst dead is stoked only by blood, and human blood most of all.

Elvercorpses look as they did in life, but with the cyanotic pallor of a snowblown corpse, a certain silver light that flickers nearly imperceptibly in the back of their eyes, a roll to their shoulders and hips that suggests the stride of a wolf or hunting cat. They are impervious to cold, and even the heaviest of them can walk across thick snowfall or thin river-ice without breaking the surface or leaving behind even a footstep.

halflings

Lost Boys, Lost Girls, those who return from being taken into the wild by elves or worse things. They are small, a little malnourished, a little sharp of tooth, with the weird ageless look of a young person who has lived through terrible things, even through the passing of years and decades and centuries. All are marked: missing a ring finger, a notched ear, a deep-slit and scarred lip. These mean things to elves, but even halflings don’t know what.

Thirteen Pearl White Corpses

Thirteen Pearl White Corpses is a lord among the vinteralfar, an unfeeling creature of unseelie beauty. On winter nights of the full moon, they will approach frontier settlements with impossible goods: reams of corpse velvet, ingots of winter glass, sheafs of moly, fist-sized chunks of black myrrh, trading only in the currency of souls and dooms and firstborns.

They appear only atop their utterly ancient elvingbeast, Hati, an incomprehensible effusion of clawed limbs, snarling jaws, and watchful eyes. Thirteen Pearl White Corpses wear always the regalia of the vinteralfar: eyes concealed beneath white veils, lips painted blue, canines capped with silver fangs, wrists and throat wrapped with black jewels, body draped with gossamer shawls and robes embroidered with a spider’s delicacy and complexity. In their ivory-clawed hands they clutch a mirror that freezes everything it reflects.

Spells Written on the back of Thirteen Pearl’s mirror

Winterheart

just treat it like Charm Person in terms of spell level, duration, range, saves, etc

Target loses all human warmth and empathy, becoming unable to treat even their closest friends and family as odious strangers for the duration of the spell. They don’t lose their self interest, and so they can still retain relationships out of a sense of expediency, but are utterly unmotivated by connection and compassion.

Queensmirror

just treat like Phantasmal Force in terms of spell level, duration, range, saves, etc

Target’s sense of aesthetic becomes totally inverted: what was once ugly is beautiful, those who appeared honest seem untrustworthy, fragrance becomes stench, and so on, for the duration of the spell. Their sense of proprietary and memories do not change, but the spell can make everyday objects and experiences viscerally repulsive.

October 13, 2018June 26, 2019 jacinto Uncategorized

moving shop

I’ve decided to move my blog over to my own domain. The new blog is called hex culture.

As you might know, Google+ is being shut down within the year. I’ve been ramping down my social media use in general anyway, so I think this is an opportunity to cultivate a slower, kinder, and more thoughtful presence on the internet. I’m going to try to put my effort into more substantive blogging, instead of throwing out half-formed thoughts on G+ and then never developing them further. I’m also going to try to respond to comments more on the new blog–I would often fail to do so over here, due to a combination of blogger’s poor moderation tools and my own anxiety. Everyone who contacted me through gloomtrain has been very kind, and I appreciate it.

I will be closing comments on this blog soon, so it doesn’t get overrun with astrology spam bots, but definitely feel free to get in touch on G+ while it lasts or over at hex culture. I’m figuring out social media presence beyond that as I go.

Anyway, back to writing.

August 22, 2018June 26, 2019 jacinto adventures, amateur hour, demon, encounters, intro, is this gonna work, magic, monsters, occult

katabatic age

Shin Megami Tensei/Annihilation/Stalker citycrawling mashup modeled after Pearce’s Troll World.

// THE NEW AGE

In the depths of the environmental and resource crisis of 20XX, the discovery of a fifth esoteric phase of matter, upon which the laws of physics act weakly but the principles of perception and desire act strongly, promised a path to a better future. Wonderful machines and miraculous technologies, new cities clear of the rising water, humanity’s eyes once again turned to space, all with a price that did not reveal itself until too late. As esoteric substances filled the oceans and esoteric particles filled the atmosphere and esoteric fields tangled with the Earth’s own, all the shadows of the human mind, nightmares, rumors, figures from the old stories, took form and will and pried apart civilization. This new technology did not bring a Golden Age, or an Age of Humanity, but an age of dreaming deep without waking, an age of drowning in the collective unconscious, a Katabatic Age.

from Akira

// THE KATABATIC ZONE

The heart of the end of the world, where esoteric pollution is strongest. A mutating mirage-city build from the dreams and memories of its dead inhabitants, sometimes as clean and new as it was in its heyday, sometimes dilapidated and vine-chewed, its dimensions expanding and contracting so that circumnavigating it might take a week or a year or forever. It is occupied by dream-beings, eidola created by the city’s dead inhabitants: nightmares given flesh, heroes and monsters from the old stories, saints born from the prayers of the dying, archetypes aggregated from a billion human minds, kaleidoscopic psychic artifacts that corrode reality just with their presence. Rumor has it that in the deepest and strangest parts of the Katabatic Zone, there are eidola as intelligent and coherent as humans, who plot against each other and the humans who made them. The one certainty and constant of the Katabatic Zone is that a great deal of money can be made by conducting expeditions into its depths–information, instrument readings, and esoteric substances taken from the Zone are all extremely valuable on the black market.

// CUATROS SANTOS

A small city living in the corpse of a big one. Bright paint on old plaster, new plaster on old cinder block, new cinderblock on tired foundations. Neighborhoods sprung up beneath orphaned overpasses, jury-rigged locomotives coughing diesel smoke as they follow routes that once belonged to electric monorails, pickup trucks and motorcycles blast down cracked highways that once carried thousands. And looming above it all, from the corners of the city, the four colossal namesakes of Cuatros Santos, skyscraping eikons forming an esoteric mechanism that just barely keeps the city from collapsing beneath the weight of so many human minds.

from Dorohedoro

// CHARACTERS

Step 1: Roll or choose your background and make note of your favored attribute and starting skills.

job	preferred attribute	starting skill
employee	appeal	bullshit, linguistics
gearhead	intellect	engineering, computers
PI	physique	athletics, streetwise
delinquent	speed	driving, larceny
esper	psyche	mantia, science
merc	combat	firearms, first aid

Step 2: Roll 2d6+6 for your favored attribute. For everything else, roll 3d6 in order. Attributes are Appeal, Intellect, Physique, Speed, Psyche, and Combat.

Step 3: Max HP = 6. Make a Psyche/Mantia check. If you succeed, you have 1 Nous Die.

Step 4: Determine starting gear. You start with five items a competent shoplifter could get out of a Walmart and a random weapon. Italicized weapons can be hidden, bolded weapons require two hands. You can find armor and more gear on your misadventures. Guns are available, but illegal and hard to find.

roll	weapon
1	machete [d6/d6]
2	sword [d8/d6]
3	baseball bat [d4/d8]
4	switchblade [d4/d8]
5	hairpin [d4/d6]
6	chef knife [d6/d6]
7	mall sword [d4/d6]
8	crowbar [d6/d6]
9	signpost [d8/d6]
10	bicycle chain [d6/d6]

from Michiko and Hatchin

// SHADOW SCIENCE
Mantia is the shadow-science manipulating esoteric phenomena and entities. If you have a Nous Die, you can roll to start with one random Mantic trick. Mantia is extremely illegal in Cuatros Santos, but you can learn Mantic tricks from samizdat manuals and cooperative eidola. If you don’t have any Nous, imbibing (and surviving) esoteric substances, surviving eidolon attacks, spending time in esoteric fields all might give you some.

from Toujin Kit of Genius Party anthology

1. Summon
Instantiates an eidolon of [dice] levels or fewer you have made a contract with. You can dismiss it at will unless it has failed a Morale check since you last summoned it.

2. Apotropaic Tone
Sing a low note note bearing a repulsive polarity, requiring eidola to make an Aptitude check to get within [dice] yards of you. Lasts for as long as your voice lasts. Eidola that succeed their check can ignore the tone until the next time you use this ability.

3. Beckoning Tone
Sing a low note that bears a compelling polarity, requiring eidola within [dice] yards of you make an Aptitude check or reveal themselves and approach you in their true form. Lasts for as long as your voice lasts. Eidola that succeed their check can ignore the tone until the next time you use this ability.

4. Esoteric Lens
Form a simple loupe in the form of a translucent stone in your clenched fist. If gazed through, reveals eidola and esoteric fields within [dice] yards. Lasts for [dice] turns.

// NEGOTIATION
Roll Disposition Die + Faction Die on below table to determine encountered NPC’s reaction. Disposition Die is how the NPC views the party/leader/interlocutor personally, so stuff like high Appeal or cool clothes help. Faction Die is the party’s credibility with the encountered NPC’s organization or alignment. Both start at d6 and raise or lower based on various factors.

roll	reaction
2	hostile – attack
3-5	unfriendly – attack in 1 round without a good reason
6-8	uninterested – ignore the party without a good reason
9-11	talkative – will help the party for a good reason
12	amused – will help in the party for a decent reason

Human hirelings and contracted eidola are a key component in surviving in the Katabatic Zone. PCs can’t have more allies (whether they are humans or contracted eidola) than 1/3 their Appeal score, rounded down. If an ally is endangered, compromised, or insulted, their employer may be required to make an Appeal check to not lose their loyalty.

from Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse

// DAMAGE AND WOUNDS
Notice how each weapon in the list had two dice? The first is the Damage Die. If an attack lands, roll it and subtract the value from the target’s HP like normal. Easy. Being reduced to 0 HP means you have to make a Physique check or die, and are incapacitated still on a success.

The second is the Location Die which determines where the attack lands. Some weapons are more deadly/lends themselves well to clonking people on the head, and so have a better Location Die.

A location that’s been hit has a minor wound. Until it’s patched up with a turn of effort, any action that requires using that body part has disadvantage.
A location that has an untreated minor wound that gets hit again has a major wound, which means it any action that requires using that body part has disadvantage until you spend time laid up to heal.
Further injury to a location with an unhealed major wound renders it useless. If it’s your head or torso, you’ll also need to make a Physique check to see if you die, and are still incapacitated on a success. If you’re alive when the smoke clears, you may have permanent consequences.

roll	location
1-2	legs
3	Torso
4-5	Arms
6+	Head

Armor is per hit location and reduces all incoming damage by its Armor Score. An attacked reduced to 0 damage does not injure its hit location. A turn’s rest in a safe place restores 1d6 HP, as does resting in a dangerous place and eating a snack.

// MISADVENTURES

Shady Dr. Sepulveda has a standing offer for esoteric substances and artifacts extracted from the Katabatic Zone. The Administration that runs Cuatro Santos certainly frowns/prosecutes such exercises, but she pays pretty well.
Sepulveda’s bitter rival Dr. Jimenez wants eikonometry readings from the Seventh Heaven, a particularly rarefied region of the Katabatic Zone ruled by eidola born from a desire for order. He’s willing to pay quite a bit for your trouble.
Word on the street is that a commando expedition armed with exoskeletal Frames never came back from their mission into the Katabatic Zone. Whatever got them is probably still lurking, but it sure would be sweet to have a mech or two.
Somebody’s been constructing eidolon familiars from dream-stuff and selling them to gangs inside Cuatro Santos as obedient heavy muscle. Old Man Ramiro will pay good money to anyone who can shut down his rival’s suppliers, especially since the Bureau of Affairs has started sniffing around.
The Bureau of Affairs is keeping something really tasty in one of their labs not far from the edge of the city. Nobody knows what it is, but everyone knows it’s valuable. Up for a heist?

August 9, 2018June 26, 2019 jacinto clerics, demon, elves, encounters, fairy, idyll, magic, monsters, npcs

watched by the waters, watched by the sky

Been playing around with Mageblade, and I quite like it. Working on more monsters for that community-building game, and the system has been a good fit.

I made these with their relationship with a community of people in mind–the kingfisher spirits might steal fish from the players and their village, but they could also be bribed into helping them sail, for example. The monsters are also the source of potential local taboos–ringing bells in the woods might attract moon beasts, for example, or gutting fish might lead to the local deities noticing and stealing them. I also designed them so that they could be plugged into the magic system, Pokemon-style, but that’s another post.

Major inspirations are Mushishi, Shin Megami Tensei and Bloodborne.

from shin megami tensei IV apocalypse

Two house rules to keep in mind:

If a monster does something they’re good at, roll under their Aptitude. If they do something they’re bad at, roll under half their Aptitude. Use the tags in their stat blocks to help you decide what they’re good and bad at. Unless otherwise stated, monsters are always good at fighting.
Spirits appear as a mirage-shimmer to people with +1 Wisdom modifier and can be fully observed by people with +2 Wisdom modifier or more.

Wind Spirits

Wind spirits can raise, banish, strengthen, weaken, or redirect wind in line of sight. The maximum strength of the wind they can control depends on their level.

sylphids

Level 1 (4 hits), Defense 0, Aptitude 10, Damage 1d4

Ability Magnitude Gentle breezes

Young wind gods, cat-sized and blue-green, singing with a voice like a panpipe. They are like the glimpse of a kingfisher out of the corner of your eye, even when you manage to look at it directly. They love gifts of ribbons and fresh fish–they congregate in a great viridian haze when the scent of fish blood is strong in the air.

sylphs

Level 3 (12 hits), Defense 1, Aptitude 12, Damage 1d6

Ability Magnitude Stiff breezes and lesser winds.

Minor wind gods, hound sized, a confusion of emerald-blue wings, calling out in a clear contralto. They are like the reflection of a great kingfisher in troubled water, an elfin face peering out of its mouth, sometimes walking like a bird, sometimes walking like a human. They love rare flowers, jewelry of any sort, and the flesh of fish from the deepest sea. They can be seen whirling around leviathans that have risen to the surface, looking for a chance to eat.

greater sylphs

Level 5 (20 hits), Defense 2, Aptitude 14, Damage 1d8

Ability Magnitude Powerful gusts and lesser winds

True wind gods, human sized, wings unfolding like petals on a blooming flower, watchful eyes peering from the center. They can take the shape of a beautiful human of indeterminate gender, or else a tempest of cerulean and green wings and flashing beak and claws. They desire the true names of islands, exquisite treasures, and the flesh and blood of sacred fish. They appear singly when artifacts are excavated or when sea-gods make themselves known, looking for a chance to steal or feast.

high sylphs

Level 7 (28 hits), Defense 3, Aptitude 16, Damage 1d10

Ability Gales and lesser winds.

Elder wind gods, bigger than a draft horse, like a dream of a kingfisher in flight, a corona of wings and feathers that recalls the motion of waves and the arc of sea-spray. In human shape, they are gorgeous giants, but they can also take the form of a flock of brilliant kingfishers or an enormous kingfisher crowned and jeweled.

Ora Marin, the Kingfisher God

Level 10 (40 hits), Defense 4, Aptitude 18, Damage 1d12

Ability Whirlwinds and any lesser wind.

The God of Wind-Over-Water. His wings are beyond counting. He moves like a stormcloud of azure feathers or a wave of green iridescence through the sea or a golden-crowned kingfisher with wings to block the Sun. As a human, he is a crowned dancer, raising fair winds with his fan of blue feathers and sea-oat, whipping up foul winds with his fan of green feathers and palmetto frond.

Moon Spirits

Moon spirits can shed soft white light or summon a pall of darkness. The intensity of the brightness or darkness depends on their level.

elvers

Level 1 (4 hits), Defense 0, Aptitude 10, Damage 1d4

Ability Range As far as light shed by a candle

Larval moon gods, small enough to fit in your cupped hands. They are something like a white-furred moth and something like a flower blossom, always reduced to a milky silhouette as if occluded by mist. They are delighted by the ringing of bells, the scent of burning incense, and warm spilt blood.

elving-children

Level 3 (12 hits), Defense 1, Aptitude 12, Damage 1d6

Ability Range As far as light shed by a torch

Moon god nymphs, the size of a small dog. They are gracile, fronded, petaled, and winged, with wet human eyes concealed in their folds like pearls in a mound of silk, everything blurred as if by a haze of water. They adore the pealing of bells, the scent of burning sacrifice, and spilt lifeblood, which they lick with deep red tongues.

elves

Level 5 (20 hits), Defense 2, Aptitude 14, Damage 1d8

Ability Range As far as light shed by a campfire

Imago moon gods, the size of a child. They are thin, pale, sharp-toothed, four-armed, moving as easily on all limbs as their hind legs, and human-like when standing, with a ruff of white hyphae on their heads and necks, a cape of flower petal wings that unfold from their backs, revealing wet raw flesh like the meat beneath a fish’s gill. They are attracted to the tolling of great bells, the burning of the living, and those near death, who they kill and drain of blood if they are able.

from bloodborne

elving-beasts

Level 7 (28 hits), Defense 3, Aptitude 16, Damage 1d10

Ability Range As far as light shed by a bonfire

Elder moon gods, the size of a stag. They are pale creatures of gossamer and bone, their many thin limbs concealed behind luxurious effusions of white hyphae, their fronded flower wings trailing like a veil, concealing the gills-slits on their back. They swim as swiftly as they fly and run, but wherever they are, the sounding of old ritual bells, the sudden deaths of many, and living sacrifices prepared in accordance with the ancient agreements draw their attention without fail.

Moon Orphan, the Abandoned God

spirit | huge | graceful | wise

Level 10 (40 hits), Defense 4, Aptitude 18, Damage 1d12

Ability Range A light like the full moon or a darkness like the new, as far as the eye can see

The terrible God of Moonlight, luminous, fronded, billowing. It drives its immense and delicate body through the deepest waters or celestial heights with uncountable limbs, shedding gently glowing clouds through its blue-lipped sporangia, singing lunar hymns through uncountable mouths in communion with the Moon, guiding it through its course in the sky and the cycle of its phases.

April 5, 2018June 26, 2019 jacinto amateur hour, classes, is this gonna work, monsters, Not Dead Yet, table, witch

this isn’t even my final form

I’ve been working on a village-building based D&D campaign. One of the things I want to do is tie character progression to exploration, and a way to do that is make classes available based on which NPCs the party has allied with or even brought back to their settlement. For this reason, I picked a random advancement scheme, where players roll 1d100 twice on a table associated with their character class to see what they get when they level up. They can choose choose to roll on the tables of unlocked specialty classes, which means they don’t need to roll a whole new character to realize the benefits of making allies and gaining access to new stuff.

Since this model of D&D is based on building relationships and developing a home base, I want making friends to be on the table as much as possible. This class is unlocked by normalizing relations with the Orminger King, the local dragon and source of many monsters incursions (and sagacious-monarch-turned-abhuman-monster). It also complicates the player’s relationship with most normative NPCs while potentially making it easier to seek peaceful solutions with monsters. Moreover, since this is a low HP class prone to drawing aggression while still having some pretty piquant abilities, players will hopefully be dealing with the mix of power and vulnerability that makes the archetypes behind this class compelling.

Also also, it’s a bit of a rough draft. I’m not terribly worried about balance since it’s random and also players need to go to a lot of trouble to make it available in the first place, but it could still be an issue.

Based on: Ganon, Howl, Witch of the Waste, Queen Beryl, Apostles from Berserk, Maleficent, animist wizards, there’s probably some Dark Souls in here if I’m being honest with myself

from full metal alchemist

WARLOCK

Requisites: make peace with the Orminger King

You are gorgeous and monstrous, magnificent and grotesque. Your magic is born from the darkness of the new moon and the blackness in the deepest earth. People think you’re not entirely human, and they’re not entirely wrong–the wilds and the ruins and the lonely places of the world are filled with the monstrous shells of the god-kings and wicked scholars who were consumed by the power you now bear. By its nature, your magic has left a sorcerous mark somewhere on your body: your palm, your tongue, your belly, your breast. In cosmopolitan areas, people who recognize you as a warlock will be discomfited, wary, and very polite. In more superstitious areas, people will be outright terrified of you–maybe enough to do what you ask, perhaps enough to just try to kill you.

from magi: labyrinth of magic

HD: 1d4
Saves: as Magic-user
XP: as Magic-user
Prerequisite: have an emissary of the Orminger King join your village. New characters can be warlocks once the prerequisite is met, but existing magic-users can select it as a subclass.

The first time you roll on the Warlock table, you gain the ability to assume a monstrous aspect at will, giving you +1 Defense and allowing you to deal d6 damage with unarmed attacks. You cannot wield weapons or wear armor, in this form and most civilized peoples will attack you on sight. If they see you transform, they will seek to jail or execute you, even in human shape. Moreover, while you wear your monstrous shape, the Referee may require you to make a Wis check to resist the impulse to do something greedy or spiteful, if a compelling opportunity presents itself. The appearance of your monster-shape is up to you, though your face always remains the same even as your body changes.

Entries in a list separated by slashes show what is available with each subsequent reroll of that entry.

roll	new ability
1-40	+1 Spell Die
41-60	+1 Save
61-65	Your beast form gains one of the following movement types: climb, swim, clumsy flight. Pick another on reroll.
66-70	Your beast form gain skill of your choice from the following list: Track, Sense, Camouflage. Pick another on a reroll.
71-75	Your beast form’s size becomes Large and you gain +1 to Str and -1 to Dex checks. Lose the Dex penalty on reroll.
76-80	Your beast form has armor as leather/chain/plate.
81-85	Wormtongue. Gain a skill of your choice from the following list: Tempt, Deceive, Intimidate. Pick another on a reroll.
86-90	Dark Glamor. At will, you can wrap yourself in a mantle of dark power, allowing you to transform your clothing as you please and making you appear taller, more imposing, perhaps more appealing and perhaps more hideous. In this aspect your have +1/2/3 Disposition Die size from those prone to temptation and sycophancy; -1 Disposition Die size from those who value basic decency and bravery.
91-95	Minions. You have 1/2/3 Level 0 homunculi allies. They are dark silhouettes of humans, suggestive of ooze in the way their bodies give and sway with each motion. If they wear human clothes, nobody will be able to notice that their appearance is strange. If they die or get lost, you can brew one per downtime up to your max. They are very stupid.
96	Covenant. If someone breaks the word of a promise they made to you, they suffer a -2/4/6 penalty on their saving throws against your spells, and you instinctively know their direction and approximate distance. It must be a promise you genuinely wanted kept, and this ability ceases to function if you forgive them for their transgression.
97	All Shall Love Me. +1/2/3 Faction Die size with monsters.
98	Forbidden Power. When you cast a spell, you can choose to roll with d8s/d10s/12s instead. Each die still expends on a result of 4+.
99	Menace. Enemies in line of sight of you suffer -1/2 Morale.
100	Dark Garden. You rule a 1 acre demiplane that contains your lair. Its appearance is a matter of negotiation between you and the Referee. It can house and feed 1/2/3 people per day. It is totally inaccessible, but if you spend a long rest in a civilized place, you can choose to incorporate the gate to your demiplane into the location in such a way that even longtime locals may not notice it. If you close the gate to your demiplane from the outside, you can choose to send it away again. Anything native to your lair taken out of it vanishes into thick black smoke as soon as it crosses the threshold.

from spirited away

THE ORMINGER KING

A man’s impassive face, pale and immense, set onto a black-furred body, sinuous, graceful, larger than an elephant, walking on the fingertips of splayed human hands. Its great wings are like a crow’s. It is mad, mournful, vicious. It lives in the ruins of the Royal Archives, gently turning pages with giant fingertips. It brews and decants shadow-fleshed homunculi to send on raids for occult reagents and, once in a rare while, companions. It knows many spells of darkness and transformation.

RULES

I draw on some homebrew rules in a few of the entries, so here are explanations:

Magic

You can cast any spell you know. You have a number of Spell Dice, a pool of d6s which represent a combination of your innate magical affinity and experience with your craft. With more Spell Dice, you can cast more powerful spells more often. When you cast a spell, roll any number of your Spell Dice. Examine the result of each die and add up the results. Dice that come up 4+ are expended, and you cannot roll them again until your take a long rest.

from howl’s moving castle

Reactions/Personality Dice/Disposition Dice

The Referee makes Reaction Rolls on the usual table. However, they are not necessarily made with the traditional 2d6. One die is the Faction Die, and represents the encountered creature’s relationship with the organizations, groups, species, clans, etc the party or party leader is a member of. The other is the Disposition Die, which represents the encountered creature’s gut reaction to the party or party leader, a combination of the PC’s personal appeal and the creature’s mood. Both dice start at d6 and are increased by factors that would improve reaction and decreased by factors that would worsen it. Some characters have explicit bonuses to one or both dice, but the Referee can also apply modifiers ad hoc. Example: A handsome cleric wandering a dungeon encounters an incubus. The Referee determines that the Faction Die should be a d4, since demons find clerics tediously Lawful. The Disposition Die, on the other hand, is a d8, because incubi respect physical appeal.

from sailor moon

October 10, 2017June 26, 2019 jacinto classes, flowerland, is this gonna work, magic, monsters, rituals, spell

flower power

I have been rereading about Coins and Scrolls wizards and Goblin Punch spellcasters and have been thinking about my own dice pool magic system (scroll down a little past the fishing stuff). The dice pool makes magic feel more like this amorphous reserve of supernatural influence instead of a bunch of bullets in a gun, while preserving the resource management aspect that makes Vancian magic appeal to me. You’re never quite sure how much you can and should do in a day.

I’ve also been rereading Wonders and Wickedness and reading Paolo’s Marvels and Malisons. I like the distinctness of spell schools and have been thinking about how those would manifest in Flowerland (i.e. the blog post below)

ON HOUSES
Planes are the Old World’s crude understanding of the shape of Creation. As the peoples of Flowerland know, our world is made of structures, not surfaces–Houses, not Planes. The Grass House, the Mud House, the Moon House, the Iron House, the Ash House, the Salt House, and the elusive Labyrinth Betwixt are the most known in Flowerland, though of course there are others, some obscure, some defunct. The Houses respect neither topology nor topography–if you walk towards the palmetto scrub, you approach the Grass House as well, and as midnight or noon draw near, so too does the Grass House, whether or not you think you are moving. Should you, in the heat of summer and the brightness of noon, find carrion-eaters crowded around a kill out in the scrub, watch your step carefully–when the auguries of Grass are many, you stand on the threshold of its House.

Magic is: opening a door to a House and shaping what comes out, calling forth its denizens to do your bidding.

SORCERERS
HP, XP, Saves, Skills as wizard/magic-user

You have Power dice equal to your level. When you cast a spell, you can roll as many of them as you like; the more dice you roll, the greater its effect. When a description refer to a spell’s Power, that is the number of dice the caster rolled for it.

For each die that comes up a 1 or a 6, after you resolve the spell’s effects, remove a Power die from your dice pool until you take a long rest. (Rolling a 1 means you whiffed it a little and rolling a 6 means you exhausted some part of yourself)
If you get pairs, Something Bad happens
If you get triples, Something Terrible happens

At level 1, pick a House: Grass, Mud, Moon, Iron, Salt, or Ash. You know two random spells from its list. you can cast any spell you know, but you can only learn spells from your House. you do so by exploring your House, by bribing and pestering other sorcerers into tutoring you, or studying another sorcerer’s notes. You can learn to cast spells from other Houses, but each has its own requirements.

THE GRASS HOUSE
If you are a sorcerer and did not choose Grass as your House at level 1, you can gain attain its power and access its spells by eating the divine carrion at the center of the Grass House, soft like custard, rich like dessert, foul beyond comprehension.
Sorcerers who can cast Grass House spells find carrion equally delicious and disgusting and can live off of it without fear of disease or malnutrition.

GRASS CURSE
Under the roof of the Grass House, your shadow is a curse, and when you cast your shadow you cast your curse also. The sorcerer can cast their Grass Curse on someone touching their shadow, inflicting them with a persistent sunstroke that bestows a penalty to all rolls equal to the spell’s Power on a failed save. If sorcerer’s shadow is being cast in the hot sun–the Grass House sun, the cruel sun that scorches the palmetto scrub and bakes the sugar sand trails–spell gains a +1 Power without the sorcerer needing to roll another die. This hex lasts until the victim immerses themselves in very cold water or another sorcerer lifts it with magic.

Something Bad: You put too much of yourself into the curse. You can’t regain any dice lost in the casting of this spell until the victim is cured or you eat them (takes at least an hour).
Something Terrible: You are afflicted with the Grass Curse, but the only way to lift it is to cure the victim while they still live. Failing that, there are some exceedingly rare and dangerous to procure cures.

WEAVE SIGN OF GRASS
A sorcerer casts this spell by spending an evening weaving grass, withes, reeds, or similar vegetable material into a palm-sized medallion bearing the Sign of Grass. If they lose any Power from this casting, they cannot ever recover it from resting, and must restore their lost Power in some other (dangerous, difficult, and probably disturbing) way. The wearer of the Sign of Grass receives a bonus to stealth checks equal to the spell’s Power while in scrub, forests, the prairie, or other similar environs.

Something Bad: the Sign bestows a minor curse in addition to its benefit.
Something terrible: the Sign bestows a major curse in addition to its benefit.

If the sorcerer wishes, they can automatically incorporate a minor or major curse into the Sign. However, this causes Something Bad and Something Terrible to permanently afflict them with the same curse bound to the Sign.

PACT OF GRASS
Summons a Child of Grass with HD equal to the spell’s Power and HP equal to the sum of its Power dice. The Child appears as an oversized coyote on all fours, a thief with hair the color of dust and eyes the color of rainwater when it lurches to its feet, and a crow when it leaps into the air (as wolf, as thief with levels equal to its HD, as bird with trivial combat statistics). The Child of Grass remains as long as it pleases, but it only remains bound to the sorcerer’s service for a number of turns equal to the spell’s Power, at which point it is free to do as it pleases, though the sorcerer may bribe it into further service.

Something Bad: the Child of Grass wants something like: to eat carrion (either very fresh or very ripe), to make mischief, to know where its summoner lives. It will turn on the sorcerer if it doesn’t get it very soon.
Something Terrible: the Child of Grass appears and turns on the sorcerer, either attacking right away or fucking off back to town to start raising hell. It cannot be summoned again until the sorcerer hunts down and eats it.

BLADE OF GRASS
Make a blade of sawgrass or a saw palm frond impossibly strong and sharp. Sawgrass acts as a one-handed, bladed weapon of fine make (1d6+1 damage) while a saw palm frond acts as a two-handed, bladed weapon of equal quality (1d8+1 damage). The blades are sharp enough to cut through steel as if it were firewood and damage enemies resistant to nonmagical damage. The effect lasts a number of turns equal to the spell’s Power.

Something Bad: the Grass House turns against the sorcerer, making all grass like blades to them. Leaves and fronds are as sharp and strong as steel: walking on grass deals 1d4 damage/round and ruins shoes and boots, walking through scrub deals 1d12/round and reduces AC by an equal amound (down to sorcerer’s unarmored AC value). Lasts
Something Terrible: the Child of Grass appears and turns on the sorcerer. It cannot be summoned again until the sorcerer hunts down and eats it.

MILKWEED GIFT
The sorcerer cuts open their inner arm, dealing damage as dagger, and milkweed sap oozes out. When applied to an injury, it heals HP equal to the sum of the spell’s Power dice. The sap can be apportioned between multiple people, but it loses its power after a turn. The HP damage caused by this spell can only be healed with time–only time can give back what the Grass House has taken.

Something Bad: The Gift’s sap attracts a colossal swarm of red butterflies to the caster. This makes stealth nearly impossible, and the caster takes +1 damage from weapon attacks as the butterflies lap at the wound with anticoagulant proboscises.
Something Terrible: The Gift does not heal properly. Each day, the sorcerer must make a saving throw or the wound will ooze milkweed adulterated with blood and the sorcerer loses 1 point of Constitution. This lasts until the sorcerer undergoes some pretty serious curse-lifting effort or they die.

EAT SHAPE
This spell has two uses: if the sorcerer casts this spell on a ripe animal carcass that had HD in life equal to or less than the spell’s Power, they can eat it to turn into the creature. They can also cast the spell to turn into a creature they have already consumed in this manner, though the Power still has to meet or exceed its HD. The spell lasts until the sorcerer chooses to change back, but they cannot speak, cast spells, or recover Power until they do. In animal shape, sorcerers look like carrion–sticky with blood, broken bones emerging from their hide, dirt and roots tangled in their ruff.

Something Bad: the sorcerer cannot turn back into their original shape until sunset or dawn, whichever is further away.
Something Terrible: the sorcerer cannot turn back into their original shape at all, barring powerful ritual intervention

THE NATURE OF HOUSES
Unclear. Dungeons/universes/deities/spell schools. Some were raised or destroyed just past recent memory (such as when Heche Ke Eche, Cacica of the Dead, stopped shut all the doors and ways to the Ghost House with great lead nails and destroyed all of its extant dwellers in a terrible fit of pique, or the night the Moon House was born or perhaps opened agin from the disastrous sinking of Don Fernando’s barge). Others have been around for as long as recorded history, maybe built by something that came before, maybe born from the ritual weight of natural phenomena. Some Houses seem to have volition, some seem content to be a location, others are nearly impossible to enter and barely have internal geography. The Ghost House had doors of the sort that Heche Ke Eche could nail shut (according to legend), but the ways to the Moon House are still waters and bone-filled groves and the shadows of the jacarandas in moonlight.

July 20, 2017 jacinto clerics, flowerland, is this gonna work, magic, new barbary, occult, san serafín, spell, type v

hocus pocus

An open-ended magic system I’m going to use for my simplified 5e game, but you could pretty easily hack it for most D&D-likes. Owes a lot to Pearce’s 5e ritual system.

A warlock or cleric can perform a ritual to achieve nearly any effect, as long as it pertains to a Ritual Court they belong to. The casting time of a ritual depends on its intensity, value, and utility; the more expensive and difficult the ritual’s effects would be to achieve using mundane means, the longer it takes to perform the ritual.

by Berta Lum

A ritual’s difficulty is determined by the value of the goods or services it replicates. Warlocks make a CHA check and clerics make a WIS check.

If it’s no dearer than a copper piece: DC 12 and take a Turn
If it’s no dearer than a silver piece: DC 14 and take an hour
If it’s no dearer than a gold piece: DC 16 and take a day
If it’s no dearer than a platinum piece: DC 18 and take a week
If it can’t be had for love or money: DC 20 and take a month, from new moon to full

As an example, if a Annie Oleander of the Ritual Court of Ash wants to kill a rival from afar, she might decide to fill his house with poisonous smoke. Because hiring an assassin to kill someone costs more than a gold piece, she must pass a DC 18 Charisma check and take a week. Unburning a spent torch, on the other hand, would only take a Turn and require a DC 12 check , because a torch can be bought for a copper.

Duration
A ritual’s effect has a usage die that represents its duration. Each time the ritual’s effects are used or strained in some way, check the die. Ritual effects are fleeting and the die should be checked frequently; a ritual-created sword might be checked every time it is used, while a golem created by a ritual might be checked every time it takes damage. The poisonous smoke Annie Oleander conjured would be checked every time her victim finished reciting a Bible verse or opened a window for ventilation.

The sacrifice a cleric or warlock offers as part of a ritual determines the size of the ritual’s usage die:

1d4: requires nothing
1d6: 1d6 HP in blood, a favor that takes a brief part of a session, or a component worth at least a copper piece
1d8: 1d8 HP in blood, a favor that takes the better part of a session, or a component worth at least a silver piece
1d10: 1d10 HP in blood, a favor that takes an entire session, or a component worth at least a gold piece
1d12: 1d12 HP in blood, a favor that takes several sessions, or a component worth at least a platinum piece

The Ritual Courts

Ash
Mud
Grass
Corpses
Beasts
The Sun
The Moon
The Dark

April 27, 2017 jacinto adventures, afternoon espresso, flowerland, monsters, npcs

The Bode

Very quickly wrote a brief adventure for Flowerland/Horror Florida using a Monsterparts-y hack that I will run this weekend, or at least offer as a hook. There’s not a clean way to resolve the situation besides “rolling a huge boulder in front of the dungeon”, but that’s okay I guess.

There is a hill north of town where the pine trees grow and nothing else. It’s dark there, and too quiet, and too cold, even in the thick of summer.

If you are playing close attention, you might notice that all traces of the most recent wildfire stops short at the base of the hill, where the pine forest begins. If you have spent a lot of time in the woods, you might expect there to be palmetto scrub under these pine trees, not just the dead needles heaped there now.

At the top of the hill, where it is darkest and coldest, where the trees grow so dense your shoulders always brush their trunks no matter how you turn yourself, stands a temple built from roughly hewn basalt, furred with moss and crusted with lichen. There is no light inside, and the faint draft blowing from its low entrance smells foul and mineral, as if the earth started to rot like flesh. Water dews continuously on the interior walls, making the steps down to the inner chamber slick.

At the bottom you’ll find a circular room, maybe twenty feet in diameter, spiderweb cracks radiating from the jagged-edged pool of water punched into the slab floor at the center. Arranged in a circle around it are twelve deformed animal skulls: too many eye sockets, two or three mandibles fanning out from a twisted jaw, melted-wax contours and clusters of horns. These skulls are cursed, they are a curse, they are best left untouched, they are called The Bode.

IN THE TOWN OF VER
Pretty much everybody in town is talking about a bunch of messed up stuff happening in the wilderness to the north of Ver, known locally as the Old Church Wood. It’s always had an unsavory reputation, but there’s has been a spate of disappearances and bad omens associated with it.

Shrinekeeper Trinidad, the town’s cleric.

Despite his warnings and the Woods’ ominous reputation, a pair of hunters–Trinidad’s friends–pursued a deer into the pines to the north. They haven’t returned, and that was a week ago. That was the start of the trouble.
Every sunset, Trinidad lights the ritual lanterns along the perimeter of Ver. The northernmost ones have been blowing themselves out by midnight, when they should last until sunrise.

Rudriq, hunter.

Rudriq stopped hunting around the Old Church Hills when he found animal skulls wedged between tree branches there.

Pilar, witch.

Distrusted by people of Ver, considered possibly to blame.
She claims she saw an oddly proportioned creature–something on all fours, like a deer or a coyote, it had a pale face and an awkward gait–the night after the hunters should have come back.

Odesa, the town’s mayor.

She had mediated a fight between the two hunters over the game they caught a month ago, and believes they got into some sort of fight out in the woods, or else it’s bandits. She’s dealt with a lot of bandits over the years.
Odessa thinks everyone is seized by superstition and is ready to led her band into the Old Church Wood to solve this once and for all–but has been so far dissuaded by Trinidad’s pleadings.

Katarina, general store propietor

Her caravan hasn’t come back since this whole mess started. See if her idiot employees got eaten by a ghost or not.

Luis, farmer

missing from his farm since yesterday. He had been complaining that something had been going after his livestock, but not like most predators–they were killing for sport.
His farm is to the north, a few minute’s walk past Trinidad’s torches. If the players investigate, they will find his house unlocked, but his barn locked from the inside. His goats are cut apart–like they unraveled off of their own bones–and all of their skulls are missing.

THE OLD CHURCH WOOD
Dense pine trees on a steep hill. It’s dark and chill.

Encounters.
1-2: Mutilated… 1-deer 2-coyote 3-bobcat 4-black bear
3. Abandoned caravan, horses beheaded and cut to pieces, goods untouched. This is the only treasure in the whole adventure, now that I think about it.
4. Tree laden with animal skulls wedges between branches
5. Body of Luis or caravaners
6. Brood of Bode

Brood of Bode

HD: d8
10 EP
Defense 14
Naked, wiry man, running on all fours far faster than a person should be able, wears a filthy deer skull over his face
Spells: Can cast one spell per encounter from its list:

Fog Cloud
Phantasmal Force (a dark presence like a passing cloud, moving through the trees like the first cold blast of wind from an approaching thunderstorm)
Snuff (extinguish all torches, lamps, etc within earshot of its scream)
Inflict Light Wounds (what it’s been using to cut its victims apart),

THE OLD CHURCH
Brood of Bode will not enter, at least at first. One of the hunters is in this chamber, his head and torso submerged in the central pool. If approached, he will slide all the way in.

The Bode can speak in this chamber. Their voice is subaudible, like something half-imagined. They will offer their power to the strongest fighter in the party in return for a sacrificed comrade, and they are not lying: the sacrificer will become another Brood of Bode.
The skulls of The Bode are cursed. Anyone who breaks their skulls will never be able to recover from their wounds. The skulls come back when nobody is looking, anyway.
The Bode can see anything in the pines of Old Church Wood.
The Brood is the other hunter, who sacrificed his friend. His mind is lost to The Bode. The Bode will tell a PC what the hunter did if the PC keeps them talking.
The pool is cursed. Anyone who tries to swim in it will sink to the bottom and drown, and all attempts to haul them out have disadvantage. The body can be retrieved by any other method.
Anyone left alone in the Old Church must make a save or vanish. This increases the Brood of Bode’s HD by one step
The Bode want more Brood, they want more skulls in the pines to see out of, they want the wards on Ver destroyed so they can claim its inhabitants.

January 24, 2017 jacinto classes, flowerland, magic, new age dnd, new barbary, occult

something is wrong character creation

strange beings come out to make mischief in the weirding light of the spiral moon

A super-pared down 5e-ish thing for Flowerland/Weird Florida. Checks are the typical 1d20+ability score mod+proficiency bonus (if applicable), but classes are more thematically defined packages of proficiencies instead of discrete lists of skills and abilities. Magic is an unreliable accretion of superstitions rather than a very formalized list of abilities, and HP is a small, easy come/easy go buffer between mobility and death. All of this should fit the mood better than the more high fantasy feel of rules as written 5e D&D.

ABILITY SCORED

Roll 3d6 for Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Use the following ability score modifiers. If your modifiers have a negative total, you can reroll all of your ability scores. Once you have a viable character, you can swap two ability scores of your choosing.

HIT POINTS

Don’t exist. We are using the endurance/stopwatch system. Everyone starts out with 6+CON mod EP.

You can recover EP equal to your hazard die by resting an exploration turn (triggers an encounter check). Each time you rest, your max EP reduces by 1. Eating a ration lets you recover EP without losing any points from your maximum.You can’t take a rest in situations that are draining your EP.
You recover all of your EP, and you max EP returns to normal, when you take a long rest in a safe place.
You gain +1 max EP when you level up.

CLASS/BACKGROUND/PROFICIENCY
Your proficiency bonus is +2, and increases by +1 every 4th level. Add your proficiency bonus to tasks your class is good at. The listed die value is your Hazard Die, which determines how much EP you can recover when you rest and how much your weapon attacks deal.

Cacique [1d6] bullshitting, winning contests, brawling, barking orders, making friends/rivals, etc
Warrior [1d8] fighting, climbing, swimming, jumping, athletics, etc
Thief [1d6] picking locks, picking pockets, sneaking, climbing, etc
Cleric [1d4] performing apotropaic rituals, speaking with authority, praying to spirits, etc
Witch: [1d4] performing dark rituals, inuiting, animal handling, bargain with spirits, etc
Hunter: [1d8] ambushing, marksmanship, tracking, naturalism, hiding, etc
Scholar: [1d6] knowing languages, history, teratology, medicine, etc
Diva/Adonis: [1d6] dancing, singing, seducing, conversing, distracting, etc

EQUIPMENT AND INVENTORY You start with 3d6×10 dollars. $1 = 1 sp. Buy stuff off of the LotFP equipment list.

We are using this inventory system.

SAVING THROWS
Basic ability score checks. Pick one saving throw; you can add your proficiency bonus to it.

MAGIC/RITUALS
Anything that we would recognize as a spell from D&D is far beyond the capability of humans, and generally requires the intercession of a god or demon. Rituals are slower and quieter and subtler, but they are also powerful rules the supernatural world must abide by. Anyone can try to perform a ritual, but people who spend their time close to the supernatural (witches and clerics) are better at them.

Players do not get to see the list of rituals. They discover rituals as rewards, by accident, in books, through rumors, by joining factions. Some are common and most people know about, some are kept secret by powerful organizations. Players will be part of an adventuring Company that will help explain why a new crop of characters might know a bunch of weird rituals after the last group got a TPK.

[simple] rituals are easy to do. You just need the right component and the right action, like throwing salt on a monster or chanting a certain phrase. Some simple rituals people perform on accident, and this can be dangerous.
[complex] rituals are hard. They require a lot of practice and knowledge. Making a talisman, reciting a long passage of holy writ, or inscribing a pentagram just right are all complex rituals. They take a month to learn from a tutor or a text. Complex rituals are easy to perform incorrectly, and this can be dangerous.
[apotropaic] rituals are the rites clerics use to drive back the supernatural and defend humanity. When they require a check, use WIS. When they require a saving throw, the DC is 8+WIS mod (+proficiency bonus if ritual caster is a cleric)
[dark] rituals are the rites witches use to have their way with the world. When they require a check, use CHA. When they require a saving throw, the DC is 8+CHA mod (+proficiency bonus if ritual caster is a witch). These rituals are often illegal.
Players can perform impromptu rituals if they make sense. If someone is bitten on the arm by a werewolf and the cleric makes a rosary tourniquet, it is ritually potent enough to work even though it’s not listed below. These might have high DCs, or the victim might get advantage on the saving throw.

purity rite [apotropaic] [simple] Cast salt on an impure creature (devils, demons, undead, fey, etc). They must make a CHA saving throw or flee for a turn.

warding rite [apotropaic] [simple] Pour salt in a circle around you. Impure creatures must make a CHA saving throw to cross it. Lasts until disturbed or you leave the circle.

nazar [apotropaic] [complex] DC 14 Spend a long rest and 10 gp making a blue eye bead. Anyone who carries it will have advantage on saving throws versus curses. It cracks the first time its bearer is the target of a curse, whether or not they succeed the saving throw. If a would-be creator fails a check to make a nazar, all nazars they have already made lose their power.

casket rite [apotropaic] [simple] Seal a coffin with silver nails. If the interred has the will and ability to rise as a restless corpse, they must make a CHA saving throw to succeed and will not be able to try again if they fail. If a witch is trying to raise them, they must make a CHA saving throw before they can attempt it, and cannot try again if they fail.

revenant rite [dark] Bury someone with a smoldering piece of cypress charcoal on their chest, and they will return as a restless corpse. If they don’t want to come back, they cane make a WIS saving throw.

ill rite [dark] [simple] Cast grave dirt on a human as you whisper a cursed syllable. They must make a WIS saving throw or suffer a wasting illness, losing 1 EP a day until they die.

rite of calling [dark] [apotropaic] [simple] Summon a corpse by calling its name at night at the edge of the woods, the mouth of a cave, the bank of a river, or the shore of a lakeThey may or may not be friendly, and if they don’t want to come they may make a CHA saving throw to avoid the summons.

red ribbon rite [dark] [simple] tie a red ribbon to a bound or incapacitated spirit (fiend, fey, elemental, undead, celestial). It must make a CHA saving throw or consider you its master. It can remake the saving throw every time your orders humiliate it, place it in danger, or require it to violate its nature.

shrine rite [dark] [apotropaic] [complex] spend a turn building an impromptu shrine from ritual stones to a spirit (fiend, fey, elemental, undead, celestial) to communicate with it directly. You can ask it to cast a spell, perform a task, guard you, reveal a secret, etc. It may or may not be friendly. Each spirit has its own shrine rite, and they must be learned separately. Ritual stones may be reused.

January 18, 2017 jacinto demon, elves, fairy, flowerland, monsters, new age dnd

blades of grass

a 5e monster for weird florida. Been thinking about Pearce’s Monstrum 1 and Monstrum 2 posts, and while I haven’t faithfully applied those principles here, I wanted something that didn’t immediately and obviously fit into the D&D taxonomy (in some ways it doesn’t matter if your kobolds are dogmen or lizard people or birdlings or shivering clouds of diamond dust if players know that it’s a fodder enemy in the same genus as goblins and bullywugs).

~~~

you might think it’s a coyote at first when you see it running down the trail–its skeleture is right, and it has that canine posture on all fours, but then it rears back on its hind legs and then keeps going, sprinting like a human, reaching for you with its sharp fingers. it looks more like a person up close, but its mouth is a little too wide and its teeth are far too sharp, and when you cut it, its blood is pink and viscous, like real blood mixed with milkweed sap.

GRASS HOUSE DWELLER
medium fey, chaotic neutral
Armor Class 15
Hit Points 7
Speed 40 ft, 60 ft on all fours, 30 ft climb speed
STR 8 (-1) DEX 14 (+2) CON 10 (+0)
INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0)
Skills: Stealth +6
Senses passive Perception 12
Languages unknown
Weaknesses radiant damage, makes their blood burn like wet sodium
Graceful. Can take the Disengage or Hide action on each of its turns
Hide in the House. Has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks when hiding in grass
Grass House Walker. Moves through palmetto, tall grass, and natural difficult terrain silently and without penalty
ACTIONS

Claw. Melee weapon attack. +4 to hit, 1d6+2 slashing damage
Green glass blade. Melee weapon attack.+4 to hit, 1d8+2 slashing damage, breaks on a roll of maximum damage.
Weird. The dweller can cast one of the following spells per short rest. Use WIS as spellcasting ability score. Its spell save DC is 14 and its spell attack bonus is +4

as entangle. The dweller gently palpates the ground; if it is stone it flexes like soft flesh, if it is dirt or sand the dweller reaches below the surface and manipulates something unseen there. Slender pale arms churn through the ground, delicate strong hands with opalescent fingernails drag down whatever they find.
as fog cloud. The dweller scores the earth deep with its claw and black smoke boils up out of the gash.
as unseen servant. There is the faint smell of cut grass and open earth, pollen and tiny insects hang in the air.
as thunderwave. The dweller throws back its head and roars like a thousand thousand cicadas, it’s the worst sound you’ve ever heard, you can taste it in your teeth, feel it blast through the fine bones of your jaw and ears.

Pact. Once per day: Three dwellers within 5 ft of each other can use their action in the same turn to summon a demon if they are outside in a wilderness area. Roll or choose based on situation, all have fiend type. Demons have their own initiative and act in the interests of the dwellers unless separated from their summoners, in which case they act of their own free will.

sunstroke demon (as yellow faerie dragon) a ragged coyote corpse leaking mirage-shimmer from the rents in its hide, running weightlessly across the ground, flitting from branch to branch as easily as a crow.
palmetto demon (as imp) scuttling mass of palm scrub detritus: palm fibers, browning fronds, broken roots, sand clods. It doesn’t change shape, but just shows you what it’s been all along, changing from spider to rat like an optical illusion resolving itself
anhinga demon (as spectator) has a 60 ft swim speed. it coils through the air like an eel through water, braided serpentine bodies throwing off coils and wings that dissolve into black feathers as fast as they form. its conjoined heads are spotted with angry red eyes, each stare carrying a different curse.
ash demon (as azer) it could almost be a charred corpse and often disguises itself as one, but its skin is thick like charcoal. when roused the red glow of its internal flame can be seen through the cracks in its skin, and its breath is heavy with smoke.

There are dwellers in other houses, too. The Petal House Dwellers have the character of both spiders and moths, and their magic is white and filamentous. The River House Dwellers are hulking and patient and make familiars of toads and crocodiles. There is a Pure House, too, a House long ago and far away and high above, with dwellers of infinite beauty and cruelty, who drink up the creatures of the earth, who would pull apart the world like a ripe fruit and eat it if they could.