Overnight Spells

My new job involves staying up all night.  I wrote these on the BART back to Oakland after 13 hours of sleeplessness.  Not sure what level to make these so suggestions are appreciated.

A random d20 number, which the target rolls, is infected with the next spell cast on them.  The first casting does not take effect, but will repeat every time they roll that number a number of times equal to the caster's level divided by three.

Turns one of caster's arms into a crocodile head that bites for d8+Str and allows for automatic grab, with a grapple check equal to caster level, dealing automatic bite damage on subsequent rounds.

Turns target's hair into a mass of angry and venomous snakes.  They attack the target and all adjacent for level/3 rounds.  v target : attack +caster level d8 damage and 1d8 STR and CON damage for two rounds; v. adjacent targets: +caster level d3 damage and 1d3 STR and CON.  Short range.

Transforms a chosen word into a random animal that lasts for 1/turn per level. (you have a random animal table right?)  Character may no longer speak or hear that word as long as the spell lasts.  If the animal is slain, the word is lost forever.  Short range.

Causes a touched weapon to instantly shrink and multiply into a swarm of gnat-sized versions of itself, which suspend in the air, attacking all in 5x5x5 area for weapon damage (no STR bonus, magical effects apply), halving movement speed, and providing concealment.  Lasts 1 round/level, after which the weapons drop harmlessly to the ground.

Willing target vomits a complicit grey ooze.  Target must succeed on a saving throw to quickly vomit or takes damage as it comes up.  Lasts 1 round/level after which the ooze becomes free willed.

Causes 1' squared per level of thin glass (windows, panes, potion bottles) to silently disappear.  If cast upon a glass creature, deals 1d8 damage/level and suffer normal consequences of having a section of your body vanish.

Causes a lightsource to stop producing light, and instead produce invisibility in its normal radius.  Blocking the 'light' causes the invisibility to be blocked, can be refracted, reflected, etc.  1 round/level

Causes a reflective surface to allow objects, creatures, and magical effects to pass back through it into the same world.  Entities thus passed maintain the same velocity, angle, and effect after passage, but are physically reversed.  Level/3 rounds.

The Swamp of Monsters

A great swamp filled with ruined cities, mutant monsters, the mindflayer empire Zin, the Temple of Elemental Evil (where is entombed Zuggtmoy, Queen of Putrescence), Quallmar the Sunken City, and the Gorge, the great seeping crater at the border of Black Abazidun where resides the red dragon Xal-zax Thruul, the Blighted Malice.

Think Fritz Lieber, crossed by canals of toxic mud, interspersed with Labyrinth type environments, Cthulhu star creatures, The Village of Hommlet and other Greyhawk places, and Demon Souls' Valley of Defilement swamp / Tower of Latria.

Monsters

Eelmen
Venus fly trap men
Swamp witches
Hyenamen
Red elves
Mutant dwarves
Toxic people
Traveling merchants
Fungal druids
Panthermen

Frog abominations
Slaad
Mindflayers
Goblins
Shriekers
Shriekers that cast spells
Flying manta rays
T-rex
Yeth hounds (and pits thereof)
Naga
Unicorn head demon
Harpies
Demon with alligators for hands

Black panthers
Crocodiles
Three-headed wolves
Giant frogs
Giant crayfish
Two-headed crows
Cat lizards
Giant snapping turtles
Basilisk lizards
Canal squid
Snakes snakes snakes snakes snakes
Panthersnakes
Giant leeches
Singing swamp slugs

Mud skeletons
Soul vendors on rafts
Tree wights
Rune-mapped royal mummies
Sheliches

Swamp ooze
Black ooze
Red ooze
Green ooze
The amniotic sacs which the abominable children of Xal-zax Thruul birth into the swamp, which in turn incubate a random monster, or suck you up, or both
The Thing-type doppelgangers
Pillars of emerald slime
Trees of ruby slime

Places

Quallmar
Zin
The Vaults of Zin
The Thieves Guild
The Party Barge of Archduke Labriselsis
The Stronghold of Ningauble of the Eyeless Face
The Sin Vats
Swan farms
Hydra factories
Halfling villages build of woodplaster, like wasp hives atop trees
The Palace of Stars, whose powers and disposition shift according to the malicious star in rule
The Fissured Palace of Xal-zax Thruul, The Blighted Malice
Beldr Yeth, the Inverted City of Goblins, and the Labyrinth around it

Hazards

Geneseeking viral spells
Toxic rivers
Cancer sand
The twice-cursed obelisks of Zin
Swamp hexes

Powers in the Swamp of Monsters

Loriana, Vampire Queen of Quallmar
Ningauble of the Eyeless Face
Sheelba of the Seven Eyes
Zuggtmoy, Demon Queen of Putrescence
Pope Verelith IX, Keeper of the Six Elemental Archbishops
The Red Dragon Xal-zax Thruul, the Blighted Malice
Wodney Weck, the Red Star, High Guildmaster of the Thieves' Guild in Quallmar
The Warbands of the Seven Dead Stars
Tujak Z t Od, Mindflayer Priest-King of Zin

A Battle Rages!

An army of white elves from Velenheim have descended upon the castle!  Their mages prepare great spells to bring the skeleton army besieging the castle under their thrall!  But the skeleton army has completed their terrible Spider Skull Walker Golems and have fought their way into the castle!  The courtyard is a battlefield!  Enter and face:


d50, roll two or three times depending on how far away from you your goal is

1. d4+3 white elf soldiers
2. d4+4 castle soldiers
3. d8+2 skeleton spikers and d4+1 skeleton archers
4. d4+3 white elf soldiers and 1 wizard
5. 1 white elf wizard and d6+6 zombies
6. d8+2 skeleton spikers and d4+1 death knights
7. d4+1 death knights
8. d4+1 death knights and d8+2 skeleton spikers and d4 blood hogs
9. a giant skeleton
10. a giant skeleton with d6+1 archers riding in its chest
11. an eye of fear and flame casts fireball
12. Belaeg the Destroyer, a white elf sorcerer, casts Nassim's Skull Ocean
13. a white elf wizard casts summon monster
14. d6+6 white elf zombies and a giant zombie
15. d4+2 white elf knights riding on white raptors
16. d4+2 raptor knights and 2d6 white elf polar she-barbarians
17. 2d20 lunatic party guests
18. 2d20 lunatic party guests and 1 centipede demon
19. d3+1 centipede demons
20. d4+1 white elf wizards borne on a palanquin by 12 ghouls
21. a giant dinosaur bearing a Priest of Lazareth the Unattainable and 2d4+4 archers

22. an archbishop of Belm protected by three assassin nuns
23. the captain of the guard and 2d6+4 soldiers
24. a white elf wizard casts ice storm
25. a frost giant
26. d4+1 white elf priests of Lazareth the Unattainable, d4+1 white elf paladins, and 2d12 skeletons under their thrall
27. Belaeg the Destroyer casts earthquake
28. Yavandir the Moon Prince and his retinue
29. a flailceratops
30. d4+1 skeleton pipers and d4+1 spelletons and d4+4 regenerating skeletons
31. 2d12 regenerating skeletons
32. d4+3 death knights and 1 eye of fear and flame
33. Belaeg the Destroyer and his retinue
34. Ionor and Valkanen, Heralds of Lazareth, and their retinue
35. 2d12 regenerating skeletons and 1 eye of fear and flame
36. a Skull Spider Walker Golem
37. a Skull Spider Walker Golem and d4+1 death knights
38. a giant dinosaur bearing d4+1 white elf wizards, accompanied by d4+2 raptor knights
39. a white elf necromancer and d6+2 ghouls and d4+2 giant ghouls
40. a frost giant accompanied by d8+4 raptor knights
41. 2d6+2 skeleton spikers and d4+1 skeleton pipers
42. a skeleton plague caller
43. a disintegrate ray strafes d6+1 targets
44. d4+3 white elf soldiers and 1 priest of Lazareth the Unattainable
45. d6+7 ghouls
46. 1 white elf wizard and 2d12 skeletons in his thrall
47. 2d6 bone brides
48. The Maneaters
49. a white elf wizard casts acid fog
50. a vampire and 6 vampire monkeys

-----------------------



There is a complicated set-up.

So Nick as Dirtface the Barbarian, Shayne as Ignacio the Druid, Thomson as Sad Ed the Bard in the body of the Damnation Prophet, and Henry as Johann the Jotund the Paladin of Belm leave the dungeon to get some magic items identified without realizing that their time is up, and battle is upon them.  They look down on the field of battle from the windows of the tower they've been exploring.

"This is fucked up," says Thomson, as Sad Ed.  They page Ningauble of the Eyeless Face on their holographic projector ring and his flickering torso impatiently tells them that he's in the royal palace, barricaded in a room.  He's like, "Dudes, we have got to get out of here.  I will teleport you away to my stronghold in Quallmar at the center of the Swamp of Monsters if you swear to serve me for a year and a day.  But I still want the Impenetrable Emerald, which the King in Green wears upon his chest."

They are like, "Don't worry Ningauble, we've got this."

They wade into battle, heading toward the royal palace where the lord of the castle is chained up by their nemesis, the witch Dread.  She wants to summon Namtar the Incomprehensible, Demon of Centipedes, into his body.  They want to kill her.  They want to kill the lord of the castle, who killed Shayne's parents.  They want to kill the King in Green, who gains his power by communing with the slab where Namtar is imprisoned.  They want to kill the skeleton army.

And they are wily and powerful.  They rescue the archbishop of Belm from being run down by ten raptor knights.  They cleave their way through white elves and skeletons.  They fight the Maneaters, two grotesque scorpion tailed gargoyles which serve the resident archlich, and defeat one by feeding it a potion of shrink and then a potion of opposition which causes it to vomit a friendly, female maneater with pendulous tits.  They save the cathedral of Belm from a Spider Skull Walker Golem.  They say, "We have to kill that damn witch," and begin to fight their way to the royal palace.

We have been playing for eight hours.  I am leaving in two days.  Everything feels very surreal and we are all giddy.  All the monsters are making bad jokes and talking in stoner voices.

Then Belaeg the Destroyer casts Nassim's skull ocean, causing an ocean of skulls to pour through the courtyard.  Skulls swallow everyone.  All sounds are overwhelmed by the clattering of skulls.  White elves and skeletons alike are crushed.  Silence. 

They start to run across the ocean to the palace.  And through the skulls come bursting the flailceratops.

I say, 'Damn, where are the stats for that thing?'  Oh yeah, Vornheim.  Flip flip.  16 HD, 3d12 damage to everyone in front of it, holy shit.  Roll, roll.  "Okay, the flailceratops charges and swings its flail head, you all take 26 damage."

Thomson: "I have 6 hitpoints."  Henry: "I have 12."

So Shayne casts a spell which makes the flailceratops move through air as if its in water.  It's doggy-paddling in the air.  Nick and Thomson drink a potion which allows them to eat metal.  They bite the chain off.  The flail head goes floating slowly toward the battlements.  The flailceratops rolls 1s.  It begins to float away, helplessly.  They gut it and it thuds onto the skull ocean and its blood goes seeping down into the skulls.

Okay.  So they make it into the palace.  Everyone is feeling very desperate.  It's almost 2 am. 

They get to Ningauble and finally their items are identified.  They have:

a scroll of 1000 hogs, which is beyond their level to cast
a magic ring containing an imprisoned demon, which will perform one task and then disappear; it's a random demon - when it's summoned you roll on this table
a smoking, twisted, and blackened magic dagger, which can be used to incarnate Namtar into the lord's body
an assortment of magic weapons - a mallet, a sword, something else
a handful of hps between them

I roll to see how the battle is going.  "Looks like the skeleton army is fighting off the white elves, you guys."

"We got this," they say.

So holy shit.  Get this.  This is what happened:

They go to the Chapel of Scorn where the witch Dread has Lord Unwerth chained up, naked, covered in magic sigils, ready to receive the spirit of Namtar.  They say, "Hey, we got you this dagger, just like we said we would."

Dread: "Indeed you are mighty warriors.  Thank you for your service."

So she plunges the dagger into Unwerth's chest.  He swells to eight times his normal size and his flesh splits apart and out comes pouring the centipede demon, which has five featureless human heads which begin to speak the sins of everyone present.  Dread crows in triumph, and Nick twists his ring and says the magic word.

So we roll on the Demon Attribute Table.  Hmmmmmmmm, okay, so, it has, uh . . .  it's in the shape of a head, and it has, uhhhh . . .  roll, roll . . . eight extra eyes, and its body is composed of, hmm, moths, and its job is to spread disease . . .

Shayne: "How is it supposed to do that?"

It has one power . . .

Nick: "Shit."

Which is that if anyone inflicts damage on an innocent within 30', the demon is healed and must serve the inflicter of that damage . . .

"This is the worst demon.  Hey demon, kill that guy."

So this giant blue head with ten eyes composed of moths goes flapping at Namtar's body, harmlessly.  And then Ningauble of the Eyeless Face steps out from behind the door and casts 1000 hogs.  A distant rumbling.  Cracks form.  A hog bursts through the flagstones.  Dread goes, "What?"  And so then the thousand hogs come pouring through the floor.  Dread goes down.  More hogs come.  They try to trample Namtar but he is immune to normal attacks.  He is surrounded by blue demon moths.  He screams, and a wave of bloodied, shrieking hogs goes flying at the wall.  Hogs are impaled on the swords which hang from the ceiling by chains.  I remember that both these demons cause insanity and fear on sight.  The hogs go insane.  Nick and Thomson go insane.  Namtar bursts through the wall, surrounded by wave upon wave of lunatic hogs moving in inscrutable patterns containing unknown meaning, and the entire battle looks upon him.  Roll, roll.  The white elves go insane.  The skeletons begin to slaughter the now shrieking, cowering white elves.

Collectively: "What have we done we have to get out of here."

So Shayne turns into a giant bat and flies them all to safety.  They camp in a sewage pipe that protrudes from the cliff beneath the castle, and in the morning find that (roll, roll) the white elves lost the battle.  All the white elves have been slain.  Everyone in the castle has been slain.  No one has a spell to cure Nick and Thomson of their insanity.  The King in Green has been divested of his power.  The skeleton army, victorious, has moved on.  And Belm, God of Snow and Stone, has forsaken Johann the Jotund, who helped to summon not one but two demons.

"Belm sucks anyway," says Henry.

Two days later I hop on the plane.  I don't live in Philadelphia anymore.  As a parting gift, Nick gives me a  laptop he had lying around. "I'll mail you a webcam when you get to California," he says.  My players are the best players.

-------------



Here are the stats for the skeletons.

The Spider Skull Walker Golems

HP 100
AC 14
Move 25', Climb 25'
2 claws +10 1d10+2 and grab
Mounted in its forehead are the skulls of four powerful sorcerers, which power the golem and shoot 4 lasers per round from their mouths as a free action

1. Fire Laser, 2d6 damage
2. Telekinesis Laser, as grapple Strength 22
3. Repulsion Laser, knocks back opponent 2d10x5 feet
4. Disintegrate Laser, 3d8 damage

The spider skull walker golems always contain d4+1 spelletons and 2d4 archers.

Spelletons: HD 4, ac 12 or 8.  Has 1d4 random spells: 1. Soul Arrow 2d4+3 damage to 1d6 targets; 2. Dance! 1d6 targets for d4 rounds; 3. Shriek Uncontrollably, causing d10 damage to all within 20 feet and pushing them back d4x5 feet; 4. Set Aflame - 2d6 damage and you're on fire

Frost giants are sixty feet tall, 15 HD, and wield giant 3-headed flails spouting poisoned incense which leave a stinking cloud.

White elf wizards wear white robes, their hair is elaborately coiffed and piled, their lips and fingers are dyed blue.  White elf priests wield singing longswords, wear their filthy hair in braids, their teeth are cracked, and their hands must be bloodied.

Belaeg the Destroyer is a ninth level wizard atop a dead triceratops accompanied by 6 archers and 2d6+6 zombies.

Ionor and Valkonen, The Heralds of Lazareth, are a ninth level cleric and paladin, mounted on white horses, protected by 6 knights.

Yavandir the Moon Prince is a twelfth level fighter atop a white horse, protected by 4 paladins, a fifth level wizard, and two giant undead trolls.

The Galleries of the Nyctites - played, reviewed, and expanded

I was writing the contents of the secret underground chapel of Izorides the Goddess of Witchess and statting up Velrathi the 8735 God of Wind when Michael Tom popped up on gchat.   'I heard an internet rumor that you were in New York last night.' 'Yeah, I was at the Westgay until 4 a.m., we spent seventy-six bucks on Stella Artois," and then I reached for my coffee and knocked water onto my laptop, which froze and died.

I went to South Philly to hang with my pals, despondent, exhausted, and without any notes to play from.  We moped together, drank Budweiser Lime-a-Ritas (gross, don't do it), talked about the merits of gay bars over straight ones, and finally I said, 'Fuck it, let's play a one shot.  Here's a dungeon a bunch of guys on the internet wrote.  There was an earthquake and the lizardmen are paying you to map the new rooms which have just opened up beneath their camp.'

Nick: 'Oh yeah? What can they give us to sweeten the deal?'

'Fuck off, this is what we're playing tonight.'

So we scratched the surface of the Galleries of the Nyctites, a crowdsourced dungeon that can be found here.

Some thoughts:

There is an impressive organization of theme: otherworldly painters compelled to create their own existence through strange art-works, which seem to act as portals to another dimension.  There's a lot of dimension hopping and unexplained creatures.  However, because the dungeon WAS crowdsourced, there is a lack of over-arching direction.  The dungeon /feels/ like it was created piece-meal, even though the different rooms and characters reference each other in multiple places.  The Nyctites are meant to be a group that work together, but because of the nature of crowdsourcing, there was no way to describe how they do that.

These days when I write a dungeon for myself, I usually include a heading that describes the complete forces available in a given wing, their leader, their powers, and how they react to intruders of friendly and unfriendly varieties.  In the Galleries of the Nyctites, there was no reference point to give me that information at a glance, which I needed when running it at a moment's notice off my iPhone.  I ended up sort of floundering.

The other thing that made this dungeon difficult to run was the lack of essential information on creature abilities, powers, and character.  What is the name of the Nyctite master? How long have they been down here? What exactly is an arachnorooster? What are the capabilities of a shoggoth, Catalytic Plasm, psychic Aether Slime, and giant wailing toddler? Do the Nyctites have powers that distinguish them from each other?  Basic statistics (hd, ac, hp, damage, etc) are not a problem to make up on the spot, but creating powers and motivations for each monster room by room is difficult, and more importantly makes the game feel less like a GAME and more like a STORY that we're making up as we go along.

These are probably not problems for crowd-sourced hex-crawls, since a degree of preparation is necessarily implied for wilderness exploration games.  And this would not be a problem for the gallery if I decided to run this a week in advance, since this is an excellent draft with a lot of atmosphere and great ideas.  But since I have a regular game, and would always rather play that, a crowd-sourced dungeon is necessarily a dungeon I would want to pick up and play.  With that in mind, I hope that writers of dungeon rooms in the future do their best to provide a greater degree of specificity.

The goods news is that specificity is good advice for any kind of writing at all.

But hey! It was free and I got the describe the way the arachnorooster cried as Nick poked it to death through its food slot with a sharpened stick.  It was horrible.

So here are some details:

Nyctites are sallow-skinned five-foot tall cyclops with three arms - their third arm is on the left side and made of ivory, and every round they grab you, you hemorrhage from the eyes and nose for 1d12 damage, plus they can stab with their free hands.

(When I described them Maddy said, 'Okay they're off balance and have bad depth perception. I shoot an arrow in its eye.' Roll roll. Success. 'Great, I loop my rope around its feet to trip it.' Roll roll. Success. 'Nick, kill it please?')

Powerful Nyctites are able to speak words of power.  The Nyctites in room 13 can speak each a word of Insanity, Blindness, Paralyzation, and Fear.  The Master of the Nyctites, Jareth Orbis (thanks Henry) is able to speak a word of Pain.  The Master's Paramour is able to speak a word of Transformation, which turns the target of the word into a hybrid of its previous race and a random animal (you should have a random animal list), either the top half or the bottom half at random.  The Nyctite prophetess can speak a word which forces the targets to immediately witness all possible futures of their next ten rounds, overwhelming them with Confusion.  

In addition to the powerful Nyctites, there is a rotating guard of 15 nyctites armed with hooked nets, 2 poisoned daggers each (one causes excruciating pain and paralyzation for ten minutes, the other causes hallucinations to emerge from the shadows and hover about all moving forms, granting them +4 to armor for ten minutes), hooked cross-bow bolts attached to strong cords which they use to manipulate attackers from a distance, and a belt of three muted bells which they ring to sound the alarm.  The first bell indicates hostile forces, the second bell indicates an overwhelming force, and the third bell indicates an all clear.  5 of the Nyctite guards know a second level spell, and have a 30% chance of knowing a third level spell. They travel in groups of 3-6 (d4+2), sometimes accompanied by d4 ghouls.

If faced by intruders, they go ahead and release the arachno-rooster and aether plasm to roam the complex.   They probably also have the ghouls lie in wait, or even better roam the complex as well.

The non-monster painters and artists dwelling in the gallery all have HD equal to the level of the average party member +2.

The arachnooster has six wings and 27 eyes and a poisoned bite that deals d3 damage and 2d6 Con damage as it liquifies your insides.  It can fly 50' and make a bite attack.

The catalytic plasm deals 3d8 damage per round that you're immersed in it, or d8 damage if it just splashed you, and if you take 6 7 or 8 damage you have to make a Fort save or gain a random mutation.

The aether plasm has an extraordinarily complex crystalline structure.  Gazing into it causes it to take your form, though its features are blurred.  Touching it causes 1d6 Cha damage per turn as it devours your features.  It can also extend a threadlike tendril to attack.  When it absorbs 10 Cha damage, it gives birth to a doppelganger, which attempts to escape the dungeon complex.

The Corpulence is HD 8 + party level, ac 8 or 12, move 20', can grab at Strength 20 and automatically crush for d12+7 damage, or can eat a grabbed creature for d8+5 damage and try to crush another at the same time.  Normal weapons are useless against the Corpulence, as his layers of fat simply heal themselves as fast as they are wounded.  When he takes damage, his hot liquid fat splashes on a random adjacent target, dealing damage equal to the amount of damage he would have taken if he weren't so fat.

------

That should do it.  We didn't get very far.  They made friends with Jin Jubboflex the mouse-man, tortured some Nyctite guards, and threatened to push the canvas stretcher into the God room until they decided to push him into the room with the Corpulence. Then I looked at the room with the Corpulence and saw there wasn't enough information to run it on three hours of sleep and said, 'Zzzzzzzzzz.'

I wanted to get to the part where they explore the alternate dimensions but that would take a few sessions.  More than anything though, I want to see my players get skewered by the razor sharp bill of a giant heron god.

-----

Oh and yeah I'm a gay role player and I play with a lot of gay guys, or maybe they're bi or queer or something, but I don't think any of them are straight, except for maybe Thomson and Nick.  I've never asked because it doesn't seem important.  Henry and his boyfriend Josh sometimes play together.  Shayne and I get messaged by the same guys on cruising apps during play.  Shayne works at a gay bookstore and while I was trying to figure out the name of the Nyctite master he said something like, 'Some guy came in and asked me if I knew a place where they give blowjobs.  What the fuck?'  We make a lot of dick jokes (who doesn't?) and when Nick says something like, 'The Nyctites eat ass,' I get to say, 'Is that a bad thing? You take 9 damage as you bleed from the eyes.'

Dirtface reaps what she sews (??), and Henry levels up hard

That girl from previous entry got all jazzed about the idea of a potion of double size dick (currently possessed by the now level four wizard Mop of the Hot Rock), and made this for us.

In the meantime -

Thomson: "OMG WHAT HAPPENED DID THE LIZARD PEOPLE DISCOVER THAT WE'D BURNT SOME OF THEM TO CRISPS DID THE SKELETON ARMY CRASH THROUGH THE WALLS HAS ALL FLESH BECOME ONE FLESH DID UNDEAD DEB SEEK VENGEANCE UPON US HAS THE DUKE OF AMALGAMATION MADE HIS PLAY HAS THE KING IN GREEN DOOMED US WITH HIS SORCERY HAVE THE FROG PEOPLE BEEN GIVEN "THE DARK KISS" BY FRANCIS GNASH IS VISTULA OHN ALSO A WITCH SISTER IN DISGUISE AHHHHH"

Henry: "We got stoned with some lizard people, bluffed our way into some sweet new lizard crystal breastplates and had the archbishop Aagisss perform the RIte of Tiamat and foretell ~100 attack rolls against the angry wind god who roosts in the chambers of Izorides not far from the lizard domain."

Thomson: "oh my god i love you guys"

 Henry is becoming an extremely savvy player.

"So the giant lizardman lounging by the fire is accompanied by five carrion crawlers.  Their tentacles probe the air in your direction."

"Hail lizardman! What is your name? How much are you selling those carrion crawlers for?"

"My name is Ttiist and uhh well I raised them myself from grub and trained them with the meat of the living to do my bidding . . . so . . . maybe 800."

"Oh that's out of my price range."

After Shayne got the lizardman guards stoned with some elf weed he found in some dungeon maybe a year ago, they learn that one of the lizardman camp's primary defenses are their hooded basilisks.

"How many do you have? How much are you selling the basilisks for?"

"Only the three, and they belong to Aagiss, so I don't know, but probably priceless."

Then he met the heavily bejeweled and generally annoyed Bishop Zegis in the bottom chamber of the giant ram statue, who preferred to be pruning the magnificent jeweled armors rather than talking to thick-tongued surface interlopers.

"What beautiful armor you have! How are they made? What would you part with them for?"

Mop: "Can we PLEASE kill something?" (Pokes at her phone)

A couple good bluff rolls later, and after trading two potions of insanity and the shining eye of a long-dead priest to Tsathoggua, who was transformed into a malicious slime, but whose jeweled eye still remained amid the slop, Dirtface and Johann the Jotund have two crystal breastplates, and continue to gaze longingly at the forces and monsters of the lizardmen of great Sereth.  I don't think they've engaged in combat for two sessions now.  I hope Velrathi, the Eight Thousand Seven Hundred Thirty Fifth God of the Winds skewers them with his cruelly hooked beak.

Dirtface speaks!

Excerpt from a gchat with some girl Nick was talking to.  He says that her response was along the lines of, 'Wow I didn't know you could do that in Dungeons and Dragons.'

"what follows is an attempt to summarize the completely batshit fight we had:

okay so we were in the tower of violets, trying to find a magical stone inhabited by a centipede demon

so we could dip a dagger in the black ichor that drips from it, for a whole complicated human sacrifice thing

but so our bard sad ed had tried to shoot one of the masters of the tower with a magic wand, and it had backfired and caused them to switch bodies

so he was pretending to be the damnation prophet and leading us around with impunity, and we were walking around looking for the basement where the demon dwelt

we got distracted fiddling with a weird magical ice sculpture, and the tower cops showed up and started questioning everybody

because they'd noticed that SOMEONE had ransacked the second floor (us)

we tried to play it cool, but we knew the jig was about to be up

and we were in the domain of the sin tutor, a wizard in professorial robes with a crow skull instead of a head

and his seven sin students, all little kids with kid voices and crow skull heads, weren't letting us into the basement

so finally we lost it and set a crazy trap and lit the place on fire

and the seven crow skull kids started shooting us with crossbows

and the fire spread

and i tried to put it out using the heart of the frozen ice sculpture and it froze EVERYTHING

and the four sin students who survived retreated into the CLASSROOM OF SIN

where there was a magic-stealing red steel cube, and a chalkboard covered in nauseating runes

and whenever we slew one of the sin students, his head would detach and become a flying head trailing guts that would try to choke us

and the sin tutor turned up and touched the cube and it started to bubble and bleed

and deb the lady wolf tore his spine out to try to stop whatever horrible magic he was invoking

but it was too late! the cube ripped open and a giant bloody demon came out and started fucking us up!

and then a seam appeared in the demon's head, trailed down his body, and split him down the middle! he was a demon of division!

and one half grabbed sad ed, and one half grabbed dirtface

and seams appeared down our middles, and we each split in half too!

and each of the halves could move around and fight independently

and so all our halves and our direwolf were fighting these demon halves, crow skull kids, and flying skulls trailing guts

and then the guard patrol showed up!

a thief, a wizard, and a paladin of centipedes!

the thief turned invisible, and the wizard turned the paladin invincible, and the paladin cast a horrible spell that didn't really hurt anybody but made us upset but then! ignacio struck the three of them with divine fire and a cone of deathly cold, slaying the wizard and wounding the lot of them

and sad ed held out his pet toad, the Blindheim, who is so ugly it can cause blindness

the thief couldn't take it, and so he was both blind and invisible. he flailed around uselessly

one the demon halves started grabbing one of ed's halves, and pulled him into it

the demon's right side attached to sad ed's left side

and he became the sad demon, and started singing sad ed's magic songs against us

but sad ed's right side sung a song of magical suggestion at his left side, and told it to run from battle and cower in a corner, which it did

dirtface's right side, still carrying its giant axe, started chopping at the half of the demon that was attached to ed's left side, trying to chop it off, but it was a demon of division and so only took half damage

dirtface's left side hopped around and pitched javelins at the centipede paladin, but he was invincible the centipede paladin summoned two giant house centipedes who immediately tried to eat ignacio the druid

sad ed's right side ran over to dirtface's left side, and merged with HIM!

forming dirt ed

ignacio the druid heated the centipede paladin's magic centipede sword to burning heat, so he dropped it and ran over to try to wrest a javelin away from dirt ed

while we wrestled, deb the lady wolf started trying to tug the paladin away

and ed's new body had some snakes growing out of it, so one of the snakes was biting at this grabby paladin

and the sad demon sung a song of mirror image that surrounded him with flickering duplicates, making him hard to hit

and deb the lady wolf got split in half but recombined herself and kept on brawlin'

and then it was midnight and we all needed to stop

oh, and all along the demon halves had a preoccupation with division, so that if there were an uneven number of creatures in the room they'd freak out and panic

so throughout the battle we kept trying to kill things or summon monsters so there would be an uneven number of things in the room so yeah"

Utter insanity

So somehow my players decided to fight the forces of the Sin Tutor, who held the ground level of the Tower of Violets.  Somehow they learned that the entrance to the basement was behind a barricade held by a crowd of crow-skulled students with crossbows, so they froze caltrops into the floor, burned down the door, froze a bunch of the students with a frozen egg from one of the 10,000 Gods of Wind, and started fighting them in the lecture room of the Sin Tutor.

Out comes the Sin Tutor, who puts his hand to the blood red cube gently rotating five feet above the ground in front of the chalkboard covered in vile equations, integrals of lunacy, logarithmic notations on the functions of sin.  The cube bulges from the inside, splits, and onto the floor bloody wet and hungry slips out the Dividing Demon . . .

We had to pause at midnight after four hours of combat.  Here's what I remember:

The crow-skull children are all dead and so is the Sin Tutor.  Three of them are frozen solid.
Nick and Thomson, you've fused together and you're trying to kill one half of the Dividing Demon, which is trying to flee because the number of entities in the room is now odd
Thomson your left half is fused to the other half of the Dividing Demon
Nick's other half is fighting it
Shayne, you're at one hitpoint and a giant house centipede is attacking you, since you killed the other one
The Paladin of Namtar's magical sword is heated and on the floor, but he still seems invulnerable to all attacks
The thief is blind and invisible, and around here somewhere probably
The Ladywolf Deb has put her two sides back together

Here's why I like this (along with an indirect review of Vornheim):

I could not have foreseen this happening.  I statted up the monsters and placed them in the rooms, but none of us could have known the game would end up like this.  I didn't know who would be attending, or exactly what their powers were.  I didn't know that they would find the wind god's egg, or try to fight the crow-skull guys and the Sin Tutor.  I didn't know I was going to finally roll a 1 on the d6 random encounters roll, and that the paladin, thief, and wizard from upstairs would be the result, and that on my 'What Are Those Wandering Monsters Up To?" table the result I'd get would be, 'Just passing through on the way to somewhere else.'  All of these unpredictable and semi-simulatory results ended up with Nick and Thomson merged together and worrying about how they'd split apart if and when the demon is slain.

The Dividing Demon is a creation from Zak's Vornheim.  One of the reasons this book continues to pay and pay even two years after buying it is that it's stuffed with creatures, abilities, and ideas that are able to fill entire sessions with absolute insanity.  There aren't any rules to cover what happens when two guys are split apart and then try to fuse together.  A single short stat-block on page 28 detailing a strange and specific ability ("Attack: 2 claws (d8hp) or. . . Demon's body splits in half . . . the demon may . . . touch a target and thereby similarly split a foe") created a complicated and tense combat that forced us to track for instance whose side was doing which, and try to figure out what would happen if two right sides merged.  Luckily we didn't have to.

This is what I like from an RPG book, by the way: ideas that can be used to create murky, weird, unpredictable, self-generating situations.  Every time I read a manual that includes magic items like, 'Flaming Sword - sword wreathes itself in flame that doesn't damage the user and causes 1d6 extra damage,' I roll my eyes.  I didn't find that interesting when I was twelve.  Everybody, please continue to write ideas that lead to situations like the above.  Thank you.

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To promote unstable situations, here's my unstable situations table.

For fires, unruly mobs, storms at sea, floods, unchained spells, monarchs’ moods, the movements of skeleton armies, epidemics, and angry animals – basically, anything that is chaotic and has the possibility of getting out of control or dying down.

Roll dice for each time period (say, each round for a fire; each week for a plague; each month for a war), modified by strength of previous situation (if on the last round you roll 'Flames +3', then this round you add +3 to the 3d6 roll), and extenuating circumstances

Results should be interpreted poetically.

3d6 + previous round's modifier

2 Dies

3 Calms -1

4 Calms -1

5 Calms -1

6 Burns +1

7 Burns +1

8 Burns +1

9 Burns +1

10 Increases +1

11 Increases +1

12 Increases +1

13 Increases +1

14 Spreads +2

15 Spreads +2

16 Flames +3

17 Flames +3

18 Explodes +4