the earth does not want you

hey guys. it’s certainly been a while. i’ve been thinking about a weird fantasy florida, recently, out in the palm scrub, where everything is mean and sharp and unfriendly and unnavigable and really kind of beautiful in a careless sort of way.

sinner
her flesh moves like fire on her bones, her hair roils like a plume of smoke from her head, her feet barely touch the water as she strides across it and you smell the black magic in the air: hot metal and raw meat and ozone.

  • Each sinner knows a random cleric spell with a level equal to their HD. They can cast it at will.
  • Sinners cannot cross lines of salt or enter holy ground or consecrated buildings like churches, and they must flee the sounds of church bells and calls to prayer as if they had failed a Morale check.
  • Sinners can walk on water, walls, and ceilings; they are supernaturally light when it suits them, and any surface or structure that can support the weight of a crow will also support a sinner.

corpse
they are pale, luxuriously dressed in black veils and black lace, they move in groups of two or three, they dart about close to the ground in the edges of your vision. they never seem to be what they should, seeming to be very large and very far away, or else very small and very close; you always have to reach farther than you think to strike them with your weapon, but they can just raise their hand and touch you all the same.

  • Each corpse can cast a random magic-user spell with a level equal to their HD. They can cast it at will.
  • If a corpse sees an open grave (dug for the purposes of burying someone, at least 6 feet deep, a burial marker at the head of the grave), it must climb inside and lie down. If it hears properly recited funeral rites (INT check and a round of effort), it must make a Morale check. Corpses cannot cross lines of salt.
  • As long as nobody can see its point of departure or arrival, a corpse can teleport to any location in 120′.

palm devil
a figure standing at the edge of the pines, a little too tall to be human, the contours of its body beneath its ragged coat too long and slender, it’s holding a palmetto frond in front of its face, and when it turns to you, all the leaves on all the trees as far as you can see rattle, malicious and filled with volition

  • a palm devil’s face is indescribable; should anyone see it they must Save vs Magic or become Feebleminded. They will transform into a sinner by midnight of the following Sunday unless restored by Remove Curse.
  • Can cast Gust of Wind, Move Earth, and Plant Growth twice each per fight.
  • Can fly by riding its palm frond.
  • In a palm devil’s hands, a palm frond functions as a vorpal axe and can easily cut through any mundane substance.

venomous augury
someone has nailed a huge rattlesnake to the trunk of a dead pine tree at regular intervals, tied lengths of red silk to each nail head. it looks at you with wet human eyes and tells you something horrible.

  • the venomous augury knows everything, probably. A player can ask it anything and it will give them the true answer. This can amount to a wish–ask it where the elixir of eternal life it, and it will tell you, whether or not there was an elixir before you asked. However, every answer introduces an evil equal in influence or power to the wealth or knowledge being sought. Ask “where is the woman who will save the world?” and the augury is liable to answer “in the house of the man who will one day destroy it”
  • once someone has asked the augury a question, it forevermore appears to them as a stinking dead rattlesnake grotesquely nailed to a tree.

prophet of mud
a huge hairless face emerges from the muck in front of you. it does not bother to turn its head, but swivels its bulging yellow eyes towards you as it begins to hum a hymn

  • the prophet of mud is a third level cleric and knows Bless, Command, and Augury and can cast spells from its head or its hands.
  • the prophet can emerge from any body of mud. it can reach its hands up from any body of mud or murky water that is contiguous with the mud it head is in.
  • the prophet’s head and two hands get their own turn in the initiative order. it can only see what its head sees, naturally, but will feel things out with one hand to help the other.
  • the prophet can spend a round singing hymns to cast Rock To Mud at will.

mother
there is a mother deep beneath the earth, she once had a shell of many hard plates and swam with many sharp legs and saw with a constellation of many watchful eyes. she died long ago, when this land was still a sea, but she is still here, she is a hollow in the bedrock far below, a long spiral in the dark. sometimes she tells the land what it used to be, and when she does it listens.

photos by me

    good, actually

    So Pathfinder gets a lot of crap for being enormously complicated, but many of its spells–particularly the obscure ones–are quite good.

    Swarm Skin

    Climbing Beanstalk

    Whip of Spiders

    Curse of Burning Sleep

    Boiling Blood

    Blazing Rainbow

    Fairy Ring Retreat

    Discern Next of Kin

    Anonymous Interaction

    Mirror Hideaway and Mirror Transport

    Adhesive Blood 

    Cape of Wasps

    Leashed Shackles

    Summon Froghemoth

    Strangling Hair

    Silk to Steel

    Sands of Time

    Youthful Appearance

    Waves of Ecstasy

    Dance of a Hundred Cuts

    Marionette Possession

    Reckless Infatuation

    Burning Gaze

    Threefold Aspect

    out in the swamp where the water is dark

    monsters in dungeons and dragons can feel very taxonomical, as if some fantasy Linnaeus separated the ghoul from the ghast and the wight from the specter. In practice, it’s just palette-swapping. However, I like the idea of monsters that suggest an unusual and inscrutable method of specifying one kind of creature from another.

    by Tim Waters
    distributed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

    However, I also want there to be something of a blur between kinds of monsters. Monstrosity is something afflicted or achieved, it is a political category, a caste, a title. Bluebeard and Christman Genipperteinga are as much ogres as men; Elizabeth of Bathory was a woman, witch, and vampire. Monsters and witches can and should step on each other’s conceptual turf, just because neither are wholly one thing. 

    witches with beautiful hair
    Such a witch keeps his or her hair in a long braid, ornamented to look like a snake. A single strand of it, teased free and tied around the finger, wrist, or neck of a victim, ensures their compliance in all things; so long as the strand is still attached to her head, the witch can command it to sever the member around which it is tied. Neither distance no scissors are protection against this; a witch’s hair can stretch across oceans or over mountains, and no conventional means can cut it.
         Witch-hair is exceedingly fine, but a watchful witch-hunter can follow the hair from victim to owner. However, the witch can always use his or her victims as hostages no matter how far they may be, or even blackmail them into fighting their would-be rescuer.

    blood-swallowing witches
    A witch of this ilk has learned a very beautiful song that summons great swarms of mosquitoes. The witch then disperses them across the countryside to collect blood from her neighbors. When the mosquitoes return, they vomit the blood up into the witch’s pots and pans, which the witch then brews into vile liqueurs. Some are fatally poisonous; others simply delicious, while the most coveted restores a measure of youth to the drinker.
         A witch-hunter knows a blood-swallowing witch by their love of music, by their hidden or strangely stained pots and pans, and by the barrels they keeps but never seems to tap. Imprudent enemies of a blood-swallowing witch might find themselves exsanguinated by a storm of mosquitoes.

    witches whose shadows have eyes
    The most mysterious kind of witch. shadows cast by these witches have eyes, as if their owner had two holes in their head and light was streaming through. Their shadows do their bidding, rising up off the ground, gaining strength and substance. A witch’s shadow crawls about unnaturally, like a person trying to walk on all fours, but runs as fast as a horse and possesses the strength of two.
         These witches can only be caught by close examination of their shadow, or by their shadow’s absence when they have commanded it to run off and perform some wickedness. Witches whose shadows have eyes have been known to hide their nature and rise to positions of great power and prestige.

    witches who live under the mangroves
    These witches can hold their breath as long as they please. They carry heavy cudgels and live out in the mangrove swamp, where they float facedown in the waterways or thrash like a drowning swimmer so that they can bludgeon their rescuers unconscious and carry them away to a half-submerged larder. When they are not hunting, these witches sleep in the dark waters between mangrove roots, thinking black and briny thoughts and trading secrets with passing crocodiles.
         Witches who live under the mangroves are betrayed by the mud in their mouth, which they can never quite spit out and which prevents them from speaking well. The eldest witches of this kind are trapped below their mangroves, transfixed by slow-growing roots over the course of their century sleep. They are easy to destroy if discovered, but their mgic is powerful and filled with venom.

    by Guillaurme Schaer
    distributed under CC BY NC 2.0

    upon the ancient shores of albion…

    A Most Thoroughly Pernicious Pamphlet has received an Honorable Mention in the distinguished 2016 Ramanan Sivaranjan Awards for Excellence in Gaming, an honor I will treasure until my dying day, and one I will clutch in my bony fist long after.

    I’ve decided to lower the price of the Pamphlet to $2, so if you’ve been holding out in hopes of a lower price, your day has come. You can get it here. If Gumroad gives you any trouble, which has been known to happen, let me know in the comments of this post or over on Google+ and I’ll get you a copy.

    New Barbary Session 1, Delivery in La Habana

    I ran New Barbary/La Habana yesterday, and it went very well.

    The perpetrators:

    • An amnesiac Castilian deserter with a talent for fighting and a real gift for lying. He still remembers that the fort he was assigned to (Castillo de San Marcos in La Florida) is threatened by a mysterious curse or god.
    • Sol, A mysterious maskmaker practiced in botany and superior pact-making skills. She had a hard time lying and a nearly supernatural ability to get people to tell her the truth. She was contracted by a devil to repair its mask, which was destroyed by the same entity that threatens the Castillo de San Marcos–or so the devil says.
    by Christophe Meneboeuf, distributed under CC-BY-SA license

    They owed their cantankerous one-legged landlady 100 pesetas by the end of the week or she was going to sell off all their stuff, evict them, and alert the constabulary. They decided on approaching the Red Hibiscus Society for work, and were led to the bathtub-bound towering ex-bandit who led the Society: Uncle Yusuf. He told them to pick up a package from the House of Honey and Salt and deliver it to a dead drop location at the Old Royal Park.

    On the way, they evaded a pack of coyotes gnawing on a body in the abandoned urban areas around the Souk, and tripped over the body of a (extremely stabbed) courier. The letter clutched in his hand was addressed to Frederico Buendía, the owner of the biggest distillery in Cuba, warning him that the infamous pirate Sayyida al Hurra had stolen a major molasses shipment, which would cost him an enormous sum of money and drive up the price of rum catastrophically.

    Bearing this in mind, they pick up the package from the Saints. It’s pretty disturbing–they are told not to open the package, get it wet, breath heavily around it, or spend much time touching it. Sol asks for an extra blanket to wrap around it, and pretends she’s carrying a child. On the way out, she notices it’s a bit warmer than body temperature and might even be moving subtly. 

    On the way to Old Royal Park, they notice a man with a hat pulled low over his face following them. They set up an ambush and successfully capture him, forcing him to reveal he works for a rival gang (the Ivory Palm Guild). The Deserter knocks him out, and they steal his machete, a flask filled with a floral-smelling liquid, and a brick wrapped in paper–possibly a decoy for the package they are trying to deliver.

    They reach the Park without complication, hide the package, and successfully flee a group of Ivory Palm Guildsmen, including a limping figure clutching his head. However, while running away they stumble into two sorcerers who manage to catch up with them, helped by a dimly seen creature that blinds the Deserter. It’s a man and a woman–Rosa and Rodrigo–who Sol guesses correctly work for the Klatch. They were trying to prevent the Saint’s package from being delivered to the Red Hibiscus Society, but now that it already has been, they want Sol and the Deserter to figure out where it is being kept. They agreed, realizing the Saints and Society were probably up to no good and also recognizing that Rosa was probably going to shoot them otherwise.

    They return to the Red Hibiscus Society’s headquarters and receive their reward from Uncle Yusuf, with a small bonus for fending off the Ivory Palm Guild. Then they alerted Frederico about the impending rum-market disaster. He gave them a small award and agreed to let Sol and the Deserter join his expedition to get the molasses back (the Deserter lied about his Navy experience, and since Frederico thought he possessed “the steady gaze of an honest man”, he let them join). It would leave in a few days.

    The next day, the party, wanting more money so they could outfit themselves for their coming adventure, asked for more work at the R.H.S. They were told to deliver a sealed cask to the bastard Castilians, but on the way a mysterious, ragged man named Jorge asked if he could poison the cask, with the promise that it would only “cause digestive distress” and that his days as a smuggler would let him tamper with the seal without chance of discovery. They were very hesitant, but as Jorge enjoyed a cigarette they decided to let Jorge do it if he and his “many friends in lofty office” agreed to search for the R.H.S.’s hidden and guarded package. Jorge poisoned the cask, and the bastard Castilians took it without even looking Sol and the Deserter.

    Flush with cash, they went the Souk and bought themselves a rusted breastplate and a suit of tattered leathers for armor. Sol purchased some sacrifices so she could form a contract with one of the Souk’s Mercenary Gods, and settled on The Beast Among The Lilies, a jaguar-spirit that could strengthen the Deserter or fight on its own.

    We ended the session with Sol and the Deserter ready for the hunt for the pirate Sayyida.

    Lessons Learned

    • Vornheim remains the most useful rpg book I own. I went into that session with my blogposts on New Barbary and the following prep. Everything else I scribbled in during breaks or generated/rolled up from Vornheim.
    • This WaRP hack is going very well. The Klatch sorcerer that blinded the Deserter was just “Rodrigo: spirit of darkness 3D, 10 HP” and he did everything he needed to do.
    • D&D has a lot of granularity and mechanics I don’t really use because of the types of games I tend to run. If I were to run San Serafin has a hard dungeon crawl, I would definitely use D&D, but WaRP seems to work quite well for what I want to run right now.
    • San Serafin is still a location and the players actually laughed out loud when I said they could go there to look for treasure.
    • The players really like the shrines of Mercenary Gods at the Souk.

    things to do in La Habana

    It occurs to me that jinetero is a perfect term for adventurers, even if it doesn’t perfectly match the real-life contemporary definition. Anyway, here’s the lowdown on some of the player-adjacent factions in La Habana.

    Red Hibiscus Society
    A social club/trading consortium/gang based in La Habana. Their affinity for bypassing the Emir’s taxmen has made them natural allies of the Castilians of La Florida.

    The chief of the Red Hibiscus Society is Yusuf, a colossal ex-bandit who has given up direct robbery for the relative ease and comfort of running a medium-sized crime syndicate. He always smells of violet water, and is rarely seen outside of his bath–he’s had a porcelain clawfoot tub installed in the Red Hibiscus Society Hall where he conducts most of his business so he doesn’t have to get out even as he works.

    The Society regularly employs vagrants, vagabonds, and soldiers-of-fortune to carry out its interests, both legitimate and illegitimate, with at least one layer of plausible deniability.

    1. Deliver a sealed cask to the bar next to the Castilian embassy by the Docks. Expect trouble on the way, and do not open the barrel.
    2. Retrieve a package from the House of Honey and Salt, and deliver it at a dead drop location at the Royal Park. Wash your hands thoroughly with hot soap and water afterwards, do not breathe heavily around the package, and do not get it wet.
    3. Yusuf’s step-daughter is attending the Emir’s birthday and he suspects some pencil-necked egghead at the College is going to ask her to attend it with him. Explain to him why this is not a viable decision, but don’t do anything worse than breaking his knees.
    4. That bastard Admiral is holding out on Yusuf–the Castilian has, through various semilegal channgel, acquired Gran Morado, violet water made from the purest and most fragrant violets, said to restore vigor lost to age, bring good luck, grow your hair back, whiten your teeth, dispel melancholy, etc etc, but now he won’t sell it to Yusuf as promised. Help the Society seize some La Florida-bound shipments of fine liquor to help the Admiral see reason.

    Saints of Honey and Salt
    A religious order of sybaritic assassin-surgeons who operate out of hospital-brothel-temple-laboratories called Houses of Honey and Salt. They’re the best doctors in town, but also the best murderers-for-hire, so everybody needs them and nobody trusts them. Their influence is mostly a network of debt and favors–if you don’t owe something to the Saints, you owe something to someone who does. Everyone agrees they are Up To Something, but nobody really knows what it is.

    1. The Saints need a jaguar for their experiments. Definitely healthy and whole, preferably alive, but with a minimum of injuries if that isn’t possible.
    2. One of the Saints makes weekly rounds in Old Habana, giving free care to the sick. An upstart guild of sawbones have begun to threaten her and interfere with her work–guard her  this upcoming Sunday.
    3. A deliriously ill patient undergoing an experimental treatment has broken out of the House of Honey and Salt. Find them before the metamorphosis completes their illness gets the best of them.
    4. There was a pirate raid out east two days ago, and the Saints are expecting an influx of patients. Secure an emergency shipment of bandages and laudanum from the Castilians–and you don’t have to be friends with them afterwards.

    The Klatch
    A loose society of brujas, brujos, shamans, sorcerers, exorcists, theologians, and philosophers who frequent La Habana’s coffee houses and salons and who maintain correspondence with practitioners across New Barbary. They tacitly and informally police the supernatural community (such as it is) of La Habana, ensuring that devils, the dead, and hostile gods cannot hunt unchecked by more mundane authorities.

    1. The La Habana chapter of the Klatch believes a devil has taken up residence in the city. A reward of 50 pesetas to anyone who brings information leading to its banishment.
    2. The Emir’s favorite dancer has been possessed by a malicious spirit, and it’s taking most of her caretakers’ efforts just to keep it under control. Take a trip out to the Hungry Grandmother’s shrine and ask her for a purgative.
    3. An ambitious young thief has found a a djinni (again). His first wish was for a king’s fortune and his second was for 100 wives. Since you can surely imagine how well that’s going, get that brass ring off of his finger before he causes another international incident.
    4. The New Barbary Trading Company of Castile wants to build a warehouse and offices on what the Klatch believes to be the tomb of Blood Dews Upon The Lilies, a sainted ancestor liable to wake up again if disturbed. They aren’t listening to a bunch of witches, but perhaps you can find a way to be more persuasive?

    The Souk
    Almost any merchant in the Souk will part with goods or services in return for a favor. You can buy most things there, but here are a few of the odder services you can get:

    FOOD

    • a nice hot meal. 10 pesetas. A hot meal and a rest fully heals your HP, though you might have lingering injuries, depending.
    • ingredients. 5 pesetas. If you have the skills, you can cook a hot meal without paying a premium for it, and you can do it out in the jungle or bush if you bring the right equipment. 
    • snack. If you take 10 and eat a snack, you recover 1d6 HP. You can only do this 1/day OR 1/genuine hazard faced.

    TRANSPORT

    • emperor ghost spider. The most reliable form of transportation in New Barbary, these colossal spider spirits are bound and trained to carry passengers and cargo. Their castle-sized carapaces are hollowed out: the abdomen holds lodging and cargo storage, while their handlers work in the thorax and head, where the blood of their animal sacrifices propagates through channels carved into the spider’s chitin, and where the handler’s soothing prayers can more easily heard. The largest emperor ghost spiders can traverse across the shallower parts of the Caribbean, their legs long enough to reach the sea floor. 
    • magot porter. New Barbary macaques are big enough to stare a draft horse in the eyes without getting off all fours. They aren’t particularly fast, but they are strong enough to carry a person and all of their gear, and can traverse dense jungle and mountainous terrain. Overall reliable, handy, and peaceable, but if you do manage to anger or spook them they can pull your arms off without trying very hard. 
    • sedan chair. Mostly used in the city of Otra Tétuan. They have a faintly sinister reputation, since devils and the dead can use them to travel unseen, and powerful brujas will travel on sedan chairs carried by zombis. The spouses of Dead Ixe are infamous for being carried by their husband’s mummified servants. Normally, though, it’s old money, D-list royalty, and regular joes willing to pay a little extra for some swift and discrete transportation. 
    • cars. rare, expensive, loud, smelly. They drive spirits crazy, and most cars require apotropaics from front bumper to back just to keep ambient divine rage from shutting it down. Beloved by the nouveau riche and Flowerland industrialists. They can be rented. 

    HELP

    • Competent mercenaries and guards will work for 50 pesetas a day, plus danger pay.
    • Hooligans, desperados, and ne’er-do-wells will work for 15 pesetas a day, and might try to squeeze danger pay out of you if they think they can get it.
    • Minor ghosts and spirits will work for 50 pesetas in sacrifices a day, though they are more erratic than the living and might demand further favors.
    • Godlings, loas, orishas, and the like don’t really have a pay rate–you have to negotiate on a case by case basis, and you usually have to find a medium in good standing with the entity to want to call on first.

    westward the course

    Been wanting to run a little like Morrowind, a little like Tekumel, a little like Tartary. Magical realist Latin America if the Reconquista failed and some enterprising Berber made that fateful trip to what would become Hispaniola instead of Columbus. Think City of Saints and Madmen, Deathless, Dictionary of the Khazars, the Etched City, One Hundred Years of Solitude, House of the Spirits, Ficciones, Trickster’s Choice, Mononoke, and Wide Sargasso Sea.
    Because I am fascinated by but incapable of novelty, I am stealing Richard’s Countercolonial Heist Crawl rules, and applying a few changes to soothe my trad gamer anxieties.
    New Barbary

    La Habana
    The game starts here. The dastardly Castilians of La Florida have parked a flotilla of the coast, ostensibly to await the Emir of La Habana’s response to their treaty proposal but in actuality to violently extract concessions should he refuse. This has proven to be quite a kick to the anthill–the surrounding loose confederacy of caciques, sheikhs, bandits chiefs, and pirate captains who technically owe fealty to the emir are all scrambling to pick sides and ensure they come out on top once the dust settles.

    Otra Tetuán
    The biggest city in New Barbary, located near the real-life Panama City. Ruled by a cartel of traders and pirates, this is the metropolis where you can buy any good, purchase any service, or find any piece of information you might need.

    San Serafín
    Ruined nightmare island-city, filled with curses and monsters and treasure. 

    Hacienda San Cuervo 
    Lands in Western Cuba held by Ohache, the despicable Dead Man famous for the blood he demands from his tenants, servants, and slaves.

    CHARACTER CREATION

    Step 1: Determine Ability Scores
    Roll 3d6 for Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma. Only record the modifiers, except for Constitution. The total equals your HP.

    Step 2: Traits (Professions, Skills, and Specializations)
    1. Pick a Profession, like pirate or blacksmith or spirit medium. When you attempt a task that draws on the knowledge of your profession, roll 2D+ability score modifier. 
    2. Pick a Skill, like sailing, melee combat, metalworking, marksmanship, sorcery, charm, or pickpocketing. When you attempt a task that draws on your proficiency of this skill, roll 3D+ability score modifier. 
    3. Pick a Specialization, like seduction (versus the more general “charm” skill), swordsmithing (versus the more general “metalworking” skill), fist fighting (versus the more general “melee combat” skill), or curse-throwing (versus the more general “sorcery” skill). When you attempt a task that draws on your proficiency of this specialization, roll 4D+ability score modifier.  

    When you attempt to perform a task that does not comfortably fit any trait, roll 1D+ability score modifier.

    If all dice in a roll come up 6, you can roll again and add the new result to your initial roll. Keep on doing this every time you get all 6s. 

    Step 3: Determine Wonder
    Roll 3d6. Your Wonder trait has a number of dice equal to the modifier (treat negative modifiers as positive in this case). If the result is one or more, roll on the table below to determine what your Wonder is.
    1. Cursed to Die Unscrivened Upon The Banks of the Bosporus
    2. An Unnerving and Green-haired Beauty
    3. Knows the Secret Language of Spiders
    4. Receives Letters from the Prince of Monaco
    5. Tells and Is Told the Truth
    6. Dreamt of by Nearby Sleepers
    7. Courted Maniacally but Cannot Fall in Love
    8. Possessed by a Freakish and Crude Strength
    9. Served by an Erratic Spirit of Flame and Desire 
    10. Pursued by Storms
    11. Utters Prophecies in Ancient Greek
    12. Believes Self to be Reincarnation of the Queen of Sheba
    You can use your Wonder like any other trait (so if you are Cursed to Die Unscrivened Upon the Banks of the Bosporus, you can roll it to withstand any other form of impending death). The Referee may occasionally ask you to make a check with your Wonder to see if it comes into play in a certain situation.

    Step 4: Determine Gear

    Use Richard’s rules.

    THE GAME
    Teamwork

    We are using Richard’s collective action rules. This is mostly important for caciques, sheikhs, captains, chiefs, etc because when your posse is confronting another, you’ll be using this mechanic. This will be handy for brujas and sorcerers, since spirits count as helpers and magical warfare largely relies on how many ghost friends you have made.

    Magic
    Magic is subtle and specific. Most standard-issue D&D spellcasting, like creating light, throwing fire, or raising the dead is the preserve of spirits and demigods–ignoble humans like PCs might be knowledgeable in the supernatural (what repels types of undead, rituals to prevent a corpse from being raised as a zombi). If they’re very talented, they might be able to change the direction of the wind, give someone nightmares, or bless a couple with fertility. Otherwise, they have to bind or form pacts with spirits, find places of power, or work in concert with many other practitioners. 

    Combat
    Attacker makes a roll with their most relevant trait against the defender’s most relevant trait. If the attacker wins, the defender takes 1d6 – Armor damage (damage die might be higher with particularly effective weapons, but that’s the standard). Attackers can also attempt to disarm, tackle, shove, or make trick shots.
    Profession examples
    If you want to be handy in a fight:
    1. bandits
    2. pirates
    3. mercenaries
    4. bouncers
    5. caravan guards
    6. veterans
    7. deserters
    8. vaqueros
    9. boxers
    10. fencer
    11. knight/faris
    12. fencers 

    If you want to be tricksy, knowledgeable, or particularly able to navigate society:

    1. blacksmith
    2. student
    3. aristocrat
    4. poet
    5. burglar
    6. cacique/sheikh
    7. dancer
    8. prostitute
    9. journalist
    10. mechanic
    11. pickpocket
    12. merchant 

     If you want to be occult, holy, or generally magical:

    1. bruja/brujo
    2. spirit medium
    3. sorcerer/sorceress
    4. grave digger
    5. shrine tender
    6. exorcist
    7. charm carver
    8. herbalist
    9. savant
    10. oracle/prophet/prophetess
    11. maskmaker
    12. monster hunter

    mean as the summer sun

    This is kind of a self-indulgent post but whatever. Been thinking about mashing The Curse of Strahd up with the Mozarab Latin American setting implied by San Serafin. I never quite understood why Strahd doesn’t’t just kick the shit out of the party as soon as they show the smallest signs of competence (the adventure has an explanation, but I don’t find it satisfactory). I’ve tried to give it a more fairy tale/folklore vibe with constraints that make the cat-and-mouse game between Strahd and his hunters more interesting. Anyway, I’m changing Ravenloft to Hacienda San Cuervo, which is perfectly exactly as dorky as the original. ANYWAY…

    There are seven Dead Men of New Barbary, each given special dispensation by the gods of death to reside in the Lands of the Living. They may only leave the darkness of their house on their assigned day of the week.

    Dead Ohache’s day is Friday, and he lives in an iron house.

    His flesh is flush with false life, his teeth are like a coyote’s teeth, and he licks them with a long red tongue. Everyone knows of his eyes, for they are as yellow and as mean as the summer sun, and they can see lies on a speaker’s breath.

    Dead Ohache wears a calabash on his belt, from which he drinks and from which he draws his power. It is filled with blood: the fresh blood of his servants, subjects, and slaves, the cold blood of his brides and grooms, the bubbling blood of the ancient beast that hangs helpless and eternally wounded from the rafters of his house.

    He has six spouses who administer to his hacienda when he is confined to his house. They are beautiful and evil and love him dearly, for he keeps their hearts locked away with his most valuable treasures.

    His house is iron, it is narrow and tall, it juts from the earth like a nail from flesh. His house is a place of disorder, and he does not rule his land well. By Dead Ohache’s decree, all blood and all corpses in Hacienda Cuervo are his by right to take. The dead are not buried, but put to work, and the living are hunted and used for labor like animals. Dead Ohache is is a careless master, and his administrators are many and fractious. The villages on his holding’s border have attained some measure of prosperity, but everyone has a friend or relative carried away to labor in Dead Ohache’s fields, struggle in his mines, or bleed out for his supper.

    Things to do in and around Hacienda San Cuervo

    1. Dead Ohache’s depredations have awakened a mummified holy ancestor from its funereal repose. Rozerie, the Monday Regent of the Hacienda, will pay you to take care of it before the Tuesday Regent hears about it.
    2. The brother of one of Dead Ohache’s kidnapping victims has put out an exceedingly generous standing offer to anyone who can rescue his sibling from the Dead Man’s mines.
    3. A scholar in Otra Tetuán is writing a necrography of Dead Ochache and wants to know why the Sheikha and Sheikh of the Dead have given him permission to reside in the Lands of the Living. The University is backing up their research with a reward.
    4. Pirate-cleric Sayyida al Hurra wants a crack at Dead Ohache’s treasure, and she wouldn’t mind exorcising him either. Figure out where he keeps his vault and not only will she pay you, but she’ll let you come along on the heist for a share of the spoils.
    5. Rumor has it some rebels are getting ready to raid Dead Ohache’s sanguinary. Both sides are putting out an all call for anyone who can pick up a weapon.
    6. There is a particular and exceedingly beautiful flower that grows in the yard of Dead Ixe, Ohache’s bitterest rival. He wants a cutting so he can grow it for himself.

    toil and trouble

    Extensive rewrite for the 5th edition Warlock class. It’s actually my favorite to play in 5e, but there are many interlocking abilities. This version
    • conforms more to the pattern established by other classes
    • has abilities that stand alone, and don’t require extensive cross-referencing
    • smashes the cleric, druid, and warlock together. I want to get 5e down to four or five classes and get a wider spread of character archetypes with kits. Ideally, I’ll have fighter, warlock/witch, rogue, and wizard
    • is based on archetypal things that witches do, like turn into animals, call up spirits, or brew potions.
    • has an element of risk. Shapeshifting warlocks can get stuck as animals, potions can go wrong, familiars can get loose.
    • makes some assumptions about the kind of campaign. Probably can’t go toe to toe with a monster of equivalent CR the way most classes-as-written can, most of the healing is shunted off to potion-making, so healing is a bit more important as a resource, and I cut out damaging cantrips.

    WARLOCK/WITCH
    a Type V D&D class

    from tactics ogre: wheel of fortune

    CLASS FEATURES

    click to make legible

    HIT POINTS
    Hit Dice: 1d6 per warlock level
    Hit Points at 1st Level: 1d6 + Constitution modifier, minimum 4
    Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d6 + Constitution modifier per warlock level after 1st 

    PROFICIENCIES
    Armor: Light armor
    Weapons: Simple weapons
    Tools: Choose one from herbalism kit, poisoner’s kit, and alchemist’s kit

    Saving Throws: Wisdom, Charisma
    Skills: Choose two from Animal Handing, Arcana, Deception, History, Intimidation, Nature, Religion, and Survivalism

    PACT MAGIC

    Cantrips. You know two cantrips of your choice from the warlock spell list. You learn additional warlock cantrips of your choice at higher levels, as shown on the Cantrips Known column of the Warlock table. 

    Spell Slots. The Warlock spellcasting table shows how many spell slots you have to cast spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest.

    Spells Known of 1st level and higher. You know one 1st level warlock spell of your choice. The Spells Known column on the Warlock spellcasting table shows when you learn more warlock spells of 1st level or higher. Each of these spells must be a level for which you have slots. When you gain a level, you can replace one of the warlock spells you know with another spell of your choice from warlock spell list that you have slots for.

    Spellcasting ability. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for your warlock spells. You use your Wisdom whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Wisdom modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a warlock spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.
         Spell Save DC = 8 + proficiency bonus + Wisdom modifier
         Spell Attack modifier = proficiency bonus + Wisdom modifier 

    Spell Recovery. When you finish a short rest, you can choose expended spell slots to recover. The spell slots can have a combined level equal to or less than half your level (rounded up).

    Spellcasting Focus. You can use an arcane focus as a spellcasting focus for your warlock spells

    OTHERWORLDLY PATRON

    Pick one of the following Otherworldly Patrons. At levels 1, 5, 9, 13, and 17, your patron teaches you additional spells; add them to your list of spells known and do not count them towards your limit.

    SPIRIT OF THE HEAVENS
    from mononoke

    1st: bless, purify food and drink
    5th: augury, lesser restoration
    9th: clairvoyance, remove curse
    13th: divination, locate creature
    17th: greater restoration, scrying

    ANCIENT BEAST
    from black desert

    1st: animal friendship, speak with animals
    5th: animal messenger, spike growth
    9th: plant growth, water walk
    13th: conjure woodland beings, dominate beast
    17th: awaken, commune with nature

    STORM GOD
    from final fantasy
    1st: create or destroy water, thunderwave
    5th: blindness/deafness, gust of wind
    9th: call lightning, sleet storm
    13th: control water, ice storm
    17th: cone of cold, planar binding

    FIRST GIFT

    At level 3, your patron rewards you for your service. Choose one of the following First Gifts.

    FIRST GIFT: BORROWED SKIN
    You can polymorph into any beast with a CR equal to or less than 1/3 your level. When you cast polymorph in this manner, it lasts until you lose concentration, with no other limits on duration. If you fail your Constitution Saving throw to maintain concentration with an odd result, you become trapped in your beast form until you take a short rest. If you reach 0 HP while in your animal form, you do not transform back, but continue to deduct hit points from your true form’s HP pool. You must take a short rest before using this ability again.

    FIRST GIFT: BRASS RING
    Pick one of the following: imp, sprite, pseudodragon, or a single beast with a CR of 1/2 or less.
         As an action, you can summon that creature into an empty space within 15 ft. The servant is friendly to you and your companions. Roll initiative for the servant, which has its own turns. It obeys any verbal commands that you issue to it (no action required by you). If you don’t issue any commands to the servant, it defends itself from hostile creatures but otherwise takes no actions. The servant disappears when it drops to 0 hit points or when you dismiss it as an action. If the servant dies, you cannot use this ability again until you take a long rest. The servant recovers all of its HP when you take a long rest.
         This ability requires concentration to maintain. If your concentration is broken, you lose control of the servant, it becomes hostile toward you and your companions, and it might attack. An uncontrolled servant can’t be dismissed by you.
         When you take a long rest, you can choose a different creature on the list of eligible creatures to summon. You must take another long rest to choose again. If you perform a 10 minute ritual using the remains of a fey, elemental, fiend, or beast-type creature with a CR equal to or less than 1/4 your level, you can add it to the list of creatures you can summon with this ability.

    FIRST GIFT: STRANGE KNOWLEDGE
    Learning. If gain the following proficiencies if you do not already have them:

    • Arcana skill
    • herbalism kit

    Ritualist.  If any of the warlock spells you know or learn have the ritual tag, you can cast them as rituals. If you find any ritual spell in a scroll or spellbook, or see it cast, you can attempt to recreate it as a ritual. This requires an Intelligence (Arcana) check vs a DC of 11 + Spell Level. If the spell exceeds half your level (rounded up), you make the roll at disadvantage. If you succeed the check, the ritual proceeds as it should; if you fail, catastrophe strikes as determined by the DM).

    Potion-maker. When you find a spell with a level of 5 or less, and that spell has a range of Self or Touch, you can memorize it as a recipe. This process takes 50 gp per spell level and 1 hour per spell level, as you impress the formula into your mind with the aid of exotic drugs. You can learn as many recipes as you like.
         You can brew potions using your recipe book. This process requires

    • 50gp/spell level (in ingredients)
    • 1 hour/spell level (fretting over alembics and stirring cauldrons)
    • A Wisdom (herbalism kit) check with a DC of 11 + spell level. If the spell exceeds half your level (rounded up), you make the roll at disadvantage

    If you fail a check, the potion functions as a vial of poison (the DM should roll this check outside of the player’s view and not tell them the result). If a spell can be cast at multiple spell levels, you can choose which at the time of brewing, but you must pay the extra money and take the extra time. A potion causes the exact same effects as the spell it is based off of on the creature that ingests it. You count as the caster if it comes up in the spell description.
         The number of potions you have brewed cannot exceed half your level (rounded up). If you exceed this limit, a random potion you have brewed loses its potency.

    SECOND GIFT

    At level 11, your patron rewards you for your continuing service. Choose one of the following Second Gifts.

    SECOND GIFT: WITCH GARDEN
    You acquire a home and garden in the form of a 1 acre demiplane. Its exact nature, climate, and contents are a matter between you and your DM. The garden is never more than half a day’s travel away, no matter where you go or where you are. Only you know the way there, though others can follow you (even without your knowledge)

    SECOND GIFT: UNBREAKABLE OATH
    Anyone who signs a contract with or swears an oath to you must make a Charisma save vs your spell save DC in order to break its terms. They only must follow the letter, not the spirit of the agreement. Paradoxical promises are null and void.

    SECOND GIFT: WITCH FLIGHT
    You can cast fly on yourself without expending a spell slot. When you cast fly in this manner, it lasts until you lose concentration, with no other limits on duration. You must take a short rest before you can use this ability again.

    FINAL GIFT

    At level 18, your patron rewards you for your continuing service. Choose one of the following Final Gifts.

    FINAL GIFT: HEART’S DESIRE
    Your patron will grant you a wish when you beseech them directly, requiring no action on your part and sparing you the ill effects listed in the spell’s description. However, you must perform an onerous service for your patron before they will grant you a wish again.

    FINAL GIFT: MALEFICENCE
    You can shapechange yourself into a dragon-type creature without any material component. You receive advantage on Constitution saving throws to maintain concentration for this ability, and you must take a long rest before using this ability again.

    FINAL GIFT: WAKE THE DEAD
    You can cast Animate Undead or Create Undead as a 9th level spell without material components. You must take a long rest before you can use this ability again.

     
    ABILITY SCORE INCREASE

    At levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19, you can increase one ability score by 2 or two ability scores by 1. You cannot increase an ability score above 20.

     SPELL LIST CHANGES
    WARLOCK CANTRIPS
    thaumaturgy
    druidcraft
    control flames*
    gust*
    shape water*
    mold earth*
    friends
    mending
    message
    minor illusion

    Asterisked cantrips are from the Elemental Evil Player’s Companion (which is free).

     ADDITIONAL FIRST LEVEL WARLOCK SPELLS

    command
    disguise self
    feather fall
    fog cloud

    les petites mortes

    Lately I have been thinking about the excellent Last Gasp Grimoire, that most estimable house of ick, so have some gross monsters to tide you over until +Logan Knight ‘s terrible return.

    The Saints of Honey and Salt are a faction of horrific holy biomantic sybarites. Their Houses of Honey and Salt are hospital-brothel-temple-laboratories where you can get just about any disease or injury cured, but also might get abducted and turned into goo. They might bring you back from the brink of death, or they might make your life the plot of The Thing and Fatal Attraction at the same time.

    Players can also go to a House of Honey and Salt for extreme body modification–swapping ability scores, gaining claws/fangs (and natural attacks), gaining ogre strength*, or receivingany cosmetic alteration within natural human range, and a few that aren’t.
    Anyway, here are some enemies and monsters a party of characters might run into if they fall afoul of the Saints.

    Saints of Honey and Salt

    These are the saints you are most likely to meet in the street or the temple: the spies, the courtiers, the paramours, the healers.

    Stats as dervish. Following abilities are cumulative with each rank:

    1. Servant: Can whisper Commands at will.
    2. Saint: +1 HD. Victims take d6 damage per round of skin-to-skin contact, no Save.
    3. Ecstatic: +2 HD. Can cast Charm Person at will on anyone standing close enough to smell their perfume (spear range)
    4. Delectator: +3 HD. Can cast Inflict Poison at melee range at will.
    5. Revelator: +4 HD. Immune to normal and silver weapons; only takes damage from cursed weapons and weapons coated with someone else’s blood.
    Hierophant of Bliss
    Ancient Saints that have cast off any pretense of humanity. They are huge–eight or nine feet–and beautiful in a toxic sort of way, appealing like too-ripe fruit just before the first traces of rot reveal themselves. They are ogre-strong and frequently responsible for brewing a temple’s supply of poisons and drugs.

    Stats, abilities, attacks as troll. Fire and acid do not halt health regeneration, but weapons coated with someone else’s blood do.

    • Casts spells as 6th level cleric. Always memorizes Fuse, a third level spell that causes the target to permanently combine with the next creature they touch as a chimera (save vs petrification to avoid, can be resolved with Remove Curse)
    • Can heal a target for 1d6 HP by wounding itself (1d6 damage) and spraying them with the resulting blood, aspergilium-style.

    Hungry Chrism 

    from Dark Souls 3

    Sometimes, the ecstatic alchemical regimens of the Saints fail, and an acolyte becomes a quantity of Hungry Chrism (also known as holy slime, saintsblood, the Velvet Blessing) instead. In its true form, Hungry Chrism is the red of fresh blood, mucus-thick and bubbling with intent. It smells of rotting meat, jasmine, and sweat.

    Holy Chrism generally remains loyal to the Saints of Honey and Salt, but its alien intelligence and traumatic birth makes it an unreliable ally–it is most often destroyed or sealed away in casks for particular tasks.

    Stats as grey ooze, cannot deal damage, but enjoys a +4 bonus to grapple attempts. 

    Incarnation
    Hungry Chrism at first appears as a person it has consumed, perhaps a little healthier and attractive than before, perhaps a little more bright-eyed and flushed. When a Hungry Chrism sheds its disguise, hidden seams open up around its skin, and its flesh unwinds itself from around its bones, oozing to the floor and leaving a clean skeleton behind. So long as it is still attached to a skeleton, it can assume the form of any creature it has consumed (as the Polymorph spell) 

    Assumption
    If Hungry Chrism succeeds an attack roll after it has successfully grappled a creature, it forces itself into their body through their mouth, nose, eyes, and pores. There, it begins to insinuate itself through their tissue, replacing their substance with its own. So long as the Chrism lives in the victim, all natural and magical healing restores twice as many HP. However, once the total amount of HP healed exceeds the victim’s maximum HP, the Chrism has completely replaced their body, and the victim becomes an NPC Hungry Chrism with +1 HD and several more gallons of volume.

    Expelling Hungry Chrism is beyond all but the most powerful magic or direct intervention by the Saints of Honey and Salt. However, the Chrism’s growth can be halted by cursing the victim–hexed flesh is immune to the slime’s ability to assimilate.

    Beast Saints
    A Saint of Honey and Salt can make you believe anything. Sometimes when the Saints have captured an enemy of great physical strength, they subject them to a mind-crushing mutagenic process, making the victim frightfully strong, utterly loyal to the Saints, and subject to the delusion that they themselves have become an animal. These Beast Saints primarily serve as guards, but they might be used to track down a refugee or sold as a novelty to (staggeringly) wealthy clients.
    Beast Saints are naked humans, bodies distended with muscle. Their limbs are altered so that they can run on easily on all fours as they can on two.
    Stats and attacks as werewolf. Cannot spread lycanthropy. Immune to normal weapons and silvered weapons; take damage from weapons coated in blood that is not their own. Can spider climb.

    *Gauntlets of Ogre Power/Strength are vague in what they do or strictly mechanical. My rule for characters with inhuman strength doesn’t modify their ability scores at all: You can easily perform any feat of Strength a normal human is capable of and automatically succeed all such Strength checks. You only need to make Strength checks for tasks that would surpass the abilities of a single person. You can carry twice as many objects without being encumbered, as well. This does not confer any bonuses to combat. Initially came up with this for my Bound Djinni class.