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.

      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

      1. Ash
      2. Mud
      3. Grass
      4. Corpses
      5. Beasts
      6. The Sun
      7. The Moon
      8. The Dark 

       

        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.
        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.

        1. Cacique [1d6] bullshitting, winning contests, brawling, barking orders, making friends/rivals, etc
        2. Warrior [1d8] fighting, climbing, swimming, jumping, athletics, etc
        3. Thief [1d6] picking locks, picking pockets, sneaking, climbing, etc
        4. Cleric [1d4] performing apotropaic rituals, speaking with authority, praying to spirits, etc
        5. Witch: [1d4] performing dark rituals, inuiting, animal handling, bargain with spirits, etc
        6. Hunter: [1d8] ambushing, marksmanship, tracking, naturalism, hiding, etc
        7. Scholar: [1d6] knowing languages, history, teratology, medicine, etc
        8. 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.

        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
          1. 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.
          2. as fog cloud. The dweller scores the earth deep with its claw and black smoke boils up out of the gash.
          3. as unseen servant. There is the faint smell of cut grass and open earth, pollen and tiny insects hang in the air.
          4. 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.
          1. 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.
          2. 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
          3. 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.
          4. 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.

        jacinto clerics, demon, encounters, flowerland, intro, LotFP, magic, monsters, new barbary, Not Dead Yet, npcs, san serafín, witch

        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

          jacinto adventures, encounters, flowerland, lordy lordy, new barbary, san serafín

          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.

          jacinto flowerland, new barbary, san serafín

          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

          jacinto flowerland, Pernicious Albion, World of Dungeons

          Flowerland Session 2 Play Report

          Lotus addict Trimalchio and jolie-laide boxer Barnaby (plus sidekick Agatha the Swamp Witch and minus partner-in-crime Violette) join forces with Prince Darwin Puck IV, one of the many mortal sons of the vast and inscrutable Queen of Albion. They decide to pursue a bounty offered by Dame Balustrade of the Knights Tentacular and destroy a disturbing black tower to the north. The party decides from the get go to ignore her warnings to not examine the tower closely under any circumstances whatsoever from the beginning, but buy explosives to keep up appearances. The charismatic Barnaby and the dashing Prince Puck spend a day to convince Qelong scholar Pran Praw and Albion druid Arminius to help them. Hiring Gator and his trusty(?) airboat once again, they depart.

          On the way they encounter some trigger-happy fellow travelers who open fire when they notice Trimalchio looking at them with his spy glass. The party kills two of them, leaving a woman and her two children alive. It turns out they had fought their way past several bandit gangs, and thought the party was more of the same. They let her go, but keep a crate of her linens as recompense. Trimalchio tries to bind the ghosts of the men who attacked them into bullets, but in his incompetence awakens a crocodile spirit instead. It promises not to eat them if they feed it daily, and they accept.

          The next day, a pack of coyotes attacks the airboat as it passes through a narrow channel between islands. The crocodile spirit demands that they kill some so it can feed, and Prince Puck almost shoots the hireling druid Arminius so they can feed him to the crocodile spirit instead. The coyotes attack and manage to maul Agatha before being fought off. Trimalchio takes more lotus powder so he can say goodbye for Barnaby, and while Agatha is not particularly impressed, she agrees to possess Barnaby’s armor so she doesn’t have to pass on to the afterlife. Arminius, not too happy about almost being made into a human sacrifice, runs away, trying his like in the wilds.

          The rest of the trip is unevenful, save for the final day, when three butterfly demons attack the boat just as the tower is in sight. One tries to put the party to sleep, another attacks Barnaby, while a third vomits onto the floor of the boat, partially dissolving it. The party dispatches them with ease, mopping up the butterfly acid with some of their stolen linens, and Pran Praq tells them that butterfly demons were once a civilized tribe on their own, but were twisted by the influence of some past civilization.

          They make it to the tower, which is located on a perfectly circular island. They explore a tunnel located near the tower (the grass around it is dead, and the plants that do live are growing away from it). They find a single room with a water-filled, transparent column in the center. They see something murky floating in it, and Pran Praq notes that submersion is one of the few weaknesses of the Night Tribe. Barnaby, who had taken one of the butterfly demon heads as a trophy, notices that it begins speaking in this room. Prince Puck takes a rubbing of some strange writing they find, and everyone quickly leaves before anything happens. They spend the rest of the day having visions in the tower, which Prince Puck identifies as a monument of the Night Tribe. Barnaby and Trimalchio acquire a yet-to-be determined new sensitivity to magic, while Prince Puck, already well acquainted with magic, learns the sorcerous art of the Rime Key, but the process permanently turns his shadow big and scary. Trimalchio realizes he won’t have enough lotus powder to stave off withdrawal all the way back to Houndport.

          Boat Status: 1 small hole, bottom partially dissolved but still unbreached.

          jacinto adventures, classifieds, flowerland, World of Dungeons

          Flowerland Classified #2

          I of course try to be consistent/maintain continuity, but one thing I’m figuring out is economy, so rewards and prices might fluctuate some the first few sessions.

          • Guards for missionary trip still wanted. 200 sp/guard. Contact Sister Aggorath at the Church of the Queen Mother.
          • Looking for scrap metal. Supposed to be a whole city’s worth a ways to the north. Will pay 100 sp/pound. Contact Samuel at the Houndport Garage.
          • Rumor has it that the Queen’s Guard has just received a large number of suspicious crates, and they’ve begun to haul them out into the Swamp. I’d like to know what they’re up to, and I’ll pay 800 sp to whoever can satisfy my idle curiosity. I’ll throw in some extra if you find out why they’re buying up golden lotus powder. – Geoffrey
          • There’s an eerie black tower not far from the Mockingbird Village to the north. 600 sp to anyone that destroys it. Do not under any circumstances examine it closely. -Dame Balustrade, Knight Tentacular
          • 1,000 sp for information that leads to the identification and capture of those responsible for the threats against the Coyote Prince, an esteemed guest of the Crown – Office of the Interim Governor
          • 750 sp reward for information that leads to the identification or capture of the Crowley Street Murderer – Office of the Interim Governor
          • Giant specimens wanted. 50 sp per pound of beast, double if it’s alive. Contact Dr. Farefellow at the Royal Society Outpost.
          • EXTRAORDINARY OPPORTUNITY–AUCTION TWO WEEKS FROM TODAY IN THE BASEMENT OF THE IRON CONCH INN. WONDROUS SUN GIANT DEVICES, ASTOUNDING NIGHT DEMON ARTIFACTS, FASCINATING CURIOS OF THE SAVAGES OF ALAKANTHUS.