Mind the structure and the rightness of the universe, or so they claim. Some serve the gods; many -- most -- continue on in their own inscrutable hierarchy. Some are worshiped as gods themselves, though this is ill-favoured.
An angel acts to further the existence and the structure, the order if you will, of the world. This does not make angels innately compassionate; if they must end a thing, a life, a creation, to preserve the pattern the Host adheres to, they will do so without hesitation.
To break from the hierarchy of type and calling is to fall to individualism.
Werewolves -- one Lindwyrmy take: A werewolf is akin to a wolf beastfolk, a human being (or sometimes another kith) able to change into an animal form; but for the werewolf, a change of shape is often involuntary -- and just as often a time of mindless violence.
Infusing a construct with the capacity for motion is simple enough, as sorcerous artifice goes; there's any number of motive sources, from chained sigil scripts to heartstones to samples of eternal flame and solid lightning and even more esoteric things. Link one or more of these to the pulleys and gears and wire-sinews of one's creation and all is well.
But for sparking actual awareness -- making something capable of acting independently -- the arcanist can but fall back on increasingly obscure and dangerous ploys ... or they can acquire a slice, a nodule, from the Grand Matrix.
Just what the Matrix is, is hotly contested by the sages and arcanists aware of it. Physically, it is a massive growth of a smooth, crystalline substance the size of a substantial hut; ribbed and striated in places, it resembles nothing so much as a great series of glassy lobes of liver or perhaps bracket fungi. And, much like a fungus, it grows in and from a substrate, in this case the shattered and half-overgrown remnants of a truly gargantuan and strange metallic structure.
The Grand Prism slowly heals over slices or chippings cleaved from it.
Setting a fragment from the Grand Prism into a wire cage or net woven from the five great magical metals inside a construct -- even one not originally intended for one -- and energizing the slice requires pouring in as many spells' worth of energy as the construct has Hit Dice and making a Save of 18. (the arcanist gains +1 to this roll for each level over 4th attained.)
If the energization is successful, roll 2d6:
02: Nothing; inert or damaged slice 03-08: Simple responses; aware, follows single command at a time 09-11: Doglike awareness and ability 12: Full sapience
A reaction test is then immediately required by the sorcerer-engineer to see how the construct responds unless further precautions have been taken.
These relentless automatons are the advance forces and shock troops of the expansionist, colonial Seven-Stars League, which prefers to send in such proxies whenever possible rather than dirty their own hands directly.
Adventurers hie themselves down twisting stairs, or follow a winding passage, or wrench open a door to a pillared chamber, and find themselves in ( a very different place. )
I like cats; I like cats a lot, like, a lot a lot. (this is surely coming as a surprise to absolutely nobody, lol.) So cats, from tabbies to tigers, have a tendency to crop up in rpg stuff I write if I'm writing it for any real length of time --
But, hilariously, despite cat people being in at least two projects (one, admittedly, the unfinished "spacehack" here on this blog) and a few instances of folks who could have a feline other form here and there as well, there are no actual cat people in Lindwyrm (though there's the wise panther in Lindwyrm Lockbox, and in recent critters there's the clewe and the steelmender at least that I recall).
So what's an option for a cat person, for Lindwyrm or whatever? Hmm ...
How about:
- Felit: See in the dark; +1/lvl to tests involving athletics; 2-in-6 sense ghosts within 40'; unarmed damage half of weapon damage (claws)
What do felit look like? I don't know, you tell me -- I have my preferences (which can change with setting, lol), but it's not like I described the species options in Lockbox.
(maybe I'll do that in some other post some time, just for the giggles)
Can I add a few more other instances of felinity to this post? Let's see --
Pasht: Grey-coated cats the size of hunting hounds, with eyes like twin moons and glinting silver claws. Hunters of the dark. 2 HD, AC 13, +2 bite (1d3) or claws (1d4+1/1d4+1), ML 9, slash: if both claws hit, kick for 1d6 automatically; purify: claws deal double damage to shifters, demons and the dead; spellbreak, 1/4 actions
Tiger-Of-The-Sword: Sometimes an oath -- of binding, of fealty, of promise just that fervent -- calls forth a great burning beast of terrible majesty to witness it and hold it fast. 9 HD, AC 16, +9 bite (2d6) or claws (2d8/2d8), ML 12, mundane immune, 4-in-6 spell resist, ignore confinement, sword blessing: oathmaker receives +4 to an action in service to their oath, 1/month; sword's scourge: instant teleport to oathbreaker's location
And then, reaching ever higher --
* Ssefrrith, Queen Of The Sky Great goddess, heavenly cat, whose patches are the clouds and whose spots are the stars, toy with the sun and the moon across the vault of the sky. Watch all below and send the rain, cool the land with the winds, rage tempests against those who raise violence against your people. - Raise yourself up as I have raised myself up. Give hope -- more than empty words -- to those who need; have I not carried you in my own mouth, likewise, until you learned and walked? Defend your home and raise your people into light. -
As commented on before, here they are -- the fifteen core xD&D-type dragons, as tweaked by yours truly and statted up Lindwyrm-style.
A note or two:
* On breath weapons: Yes, I know I don't give a frequency of breath use here, or with a lot of other dragons I've written for that matter. This is entirely because there's so many idiosyncratic ways (3/encounter? 3/day? every [x] actions? etc etc) that, man, just go ahead and use the one you like. I'd advise that if you also decide to borrow in the xD&D version of "damage = (current) hit points" you miiiiight want to limit that breath usage, just saying *lol*
* No dragonfear?: Dragonfear is a pain in the arse. I believed that decades ago and I still do now. PCs should have a reason to be afraid of the scaly bastard that isn't "the mechanics made me do it" and automatic to boot.
And here is the last third of this pile o' critters -- I've been carrying around the inspiration for all these for a few years and it's so nice to have finally done something, lol ~
It goes in cycles, to piss on the dragons in published (x)D&D and its retroclones and spawn. So it is, so it shall ever be. Colour-coding dragons is dumb, they say! It's boring! So on, so forth.
Me, I like the dragon categories and honestly always have. Nice thematic packages and often (but not always, looking at you early-versions black dragon lol) great designs to back them up; and for a lot of them, the visuals work nicely with all the rest of them -- I mean, why wouldn't a dragon species that lives in the frozen hell-lands breathe ice and be white (or silver)? It's thematic! *lol*
(yes there are exceptions, one in particular, but you will take the striking contrast of a lapis lazuli-coloured blue dragon in the desert sands out of my cold dead hands. these colours work, damnit.)
Sometimes I wonder if a lot of the yelling comes from the alignment part of the equation; and that's a fairer cop, even if I'm not really bothered by alignment stuff in the game material I acquire (I use it if running Planescape, say, and by and large ignore it when it would be underfoot). Iirc there's been a few wobbles back and forth for a few critters on the alignment chart over the years or between [x]D&Ds, but honestly I'm too lazy to check something that unimportant ~
There's not really a point to this rambling, I was just thinking about dragons and had all this come to mind, possibly because I've posted some other kinds of dragons in various lists and whatnot recently. I like other themes and looks and such for dragons also! (I just really like dragons.)
But I can haz both.
It's not even that unknown to categorize species by colour name in the real world, lol. (blue jay, grey jay ... sable antelope, roan antelope, blue antelope/bluebuck ... red fox, grey fox ...)
Lol maybe that'll be another little project to put in the hopper, write up my own takes on the fifteen "core" [x]D&D-type dragons, maybe specifically for Lindwyrm because lol that's why.
And yes I said fifteen because the gem dragons are awesome and I said so. Nyeh. *lol*
More critters! Another pile of twenty, to be precise ~ and hopefully one more batch before too long.
(an argument could be made that with Kaijune right around the corner I could have just done critters then but I have these now. maybe even more in June if I'm not eaten alive, lol)
Technically for Lindwyrm -- insofar as they match my shorthand that turned into Lindwyrm -- but makes them basically for any BD&D-ish system as long as you go ascending AC.
(I should post some kind of rambling about why I did Lindwyrm beyond "felt like it" some time, lol)
After I put Lindwyrm together, I was tempted to (and nudged, a bit, to) make a supplement to it. I dithered about it because that's my default mode these days --
-- and then a patronizing shithead in geminispace pretty much guaranteed the work would get done.
Spite is, as ever, a powerful motivator.
So Lindwyrm got itself a minizines'-worth of extra; and who knows, I might do more some time ~
I like elementals and elemental critters and elemental effects and elemental enchanted whosits. Like, I like them a lot — an affection going all the way back to when I first started poking at rpgs.
Every once in a while I start tinkering with the basic elemental lineup; while I do love playing around with the extended base-para-quasi-elemental collection from AD&D, it’s not so practical outside of those particular scenarios (but boy howdy do I love them all in Planescape!), and in any case there’s that tinkering habit.
This time around it’s less tinkering-tinkering as a collection of thematic traits for an elemental spread, and also a few tables for sprucing up any given elemental that might pop up in one’s adventures ~
Air
Earth
Fire
Water
Lightning
Ice
Sun
Moon
Darkness
Blood
white
deep brown
scarlet
deep blue
white-gold
white
deep gold
silver
charcoal
crimson
transparency
ochre
orange
teal
pale violet
pale grey
rose
pale gold
pitch black
black-ruby
pale blue
grey
yellow
pearl
ice green
silver
amber
cream
midnight blue
deep red
clarifying
mending
purifying
cleansing
revealing
preserving
nurturing
changing
concealing
growing
fugue
destruction
violence
betrayal
spite
callousness
zealotry
delusion
ennui
hunger
inquiry
dedication
passion
patience
inspiration
clarity
hope
tranquility
relief
promise
yes half of the entries are colours. no i don’t care. colour is important.
d10
Type
Shape
Demeanour
Language
01.
Air
leonine
hostile
none
02.
Earth
serpentine
neutral
Helltongue
03.
Fire
draconic
curious
High Primal
04.
Water
amorphous
friendly
common speech
05.
Lightning
geometric
grovelling
First Speech
06.
Ice
avian
overbearing
Heavensong
07.
Sun
humanoid
arrogant
High Primal
08.
Moon
arthropod
wary
druid’s speech
09.
Darkness
piscine
bargaining
beastspeech
10.
Blood
hybrid or metamorph (roll twice more, combine)
fearful
arcane cipher
granted, most elementals are also probably not speaking with mouths. but they might. you never know.
d12
Elemental Quirk
01.
divides on defeat (2 elementals of half original HD-or-equivalent)
02.
can offer creation of material goods
03.
elemental jewel heart
04.
primal nobility; expect fallout if maimed or destroyed, potential boons if aided
05.
not vulnerable to opposing element
06.
100′ range teleport ability in addition to normal actions
07.
can bestow immunity to element for 24 hrs
08.
elemental infection or engulf, continual damage to victim after successful attack
09.
“explodes” on defeat (= HD-or-equivalent)
10.
knows 1d12 spells
11.
can shapeshift into flesh and blood form or forms at will
12.
can carry touched creatures to native plane
yeah, some of these are kind of mean. I like elementals.
In continuing effort to do at least something, I decided to tinker with the writing exercise in this Twitter thread (SixFeetZen) and see how things went.
I chose dragons instead of swords, mainly because if I do Swordtember next month I probably don’t want to be all sworded out (what with already doing fancy sword npcs last month and all) and hey, why not, because dragons. So here we are, ten dragons, twenty words each. One or two might be more like nineteen. *eh* They didn’t get short, though, because I’m a wordy arsehole.
01. Malagautha coils like a ribbon of coppery patience, holding close every clipped coin and whispered rumour lovingly acquired. 02. Slate-scaled, gaunt and tattered, slain thrice over, Bruxirtax spits caustic hate through yellowed fangs and dares mortals to try again. 03. Solid as a mountain, Gorgeth ripples with muscle beneath grey and indigo mottling and has not lost a challenge yet. 04. Rainbow halos and gleaming flashes cascade from Iishinu’s willowy, snow-white coils as the drake, laughing, prepares another sorcerous spectacle. 05. Twin ridges of black scutes line Orobineth’s tawny back, matching unblinking obsidian eyes as cold and emotionless as the void. 06. Carrastine the Imperial, with ember wings and molten horns, breathes burning vengeance against a wrong made a thousand years past. 07. Let the brutes scheme and slaughter; grass green Narys chooses to barter songs for secrets, jade hornlets for grimoires. 08. Almost feline in both build and temperament, Kistunach stalks through the forest on heavy paws, striped in soot and malachite. 09. Broken antlers mark shamed Agroek as treasure-lost; the bitter wyrm gathers minions, scars of failure still bright on brazen flanks. 10. Azure Durut enforces oaths with witchery, silver talons and gilded tongue, in dragon shape and a score of human guises.
I may do more of these; it was challenging, but not frustrating. Maybe I can even get them a little shorter sometimes, lol.
(Apr 2024 edit: the Twitter account is, unfortunately but not surprisingly, deleted. I should have a printout of the challenge somewhere and may post it up for posterity if I can locate it.)
Ghosts are fun. Whether it’s coming across a fettered and desperate — or raging — spirit, stumbling into the drama around a long-deceased soul who may not be all their stories say they are, or (this one has legs) getting sideswiped by an antagonist who found a whole new way to be a pain in our heroes’ collective arse after their presumed dispatching, ghosts are overlooked as sources of story and adventure.
And that’s without getting into the potential extra layers if your game features ancestor worship!
So, here are some possibilities for ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night …
This ghost is …
01. bound to a specific object; destroy the object and free (or destroy) the ghost 02. bound to a specific object; restore the object and free (or destroy, or empower) the ghost 03. has a driving goal: protect a specific location (will be helpful if helped) 04. has a driving goal: protect a specific individual/family (will rest if natural lifespan is finished, in the case of an individual) 05. has a driving goal: take revenge for their death/ruination/dishonouring 06. has a driving goal: take revenge for the death/ruination/dishonouring of someone else 07. is an ancestral spirit acting in answer to a descendant’s petition 08. is an ancestral spirit meddling in the affairs of the living for their own purposes 09. woken by disturbance of their grave; restoring the burial will bring them rest/placate them 10. roaming because of the lack of burial; proper rites will bring them rest/placate them 11. seeking to found a ghost/ancestor cult, and may have even killed themselves for this purpose 12. actually not dead, but is an uncontrolled emotional projection from a living being
This ghost can …
01. grant flashes of memory from the ghost’s lifetime by touch 02. inflict a thematically appropriate surge of emotion by touch 03. “ride” inside their own corpse or that of another, moving it about 04. control 4d4 small (or not so small) animals, using their senses 05. manifest in 2d4 locations simultaneously 06. “mark” a target by touch, being capable of instantly manifesting in the presence of a “mark” 07. cloak individuals in their presence from the senses and/or powers of other unliving beings 08. “ride” inside a living being undetected; can whisper to them whenever they wish, though 09. grant small wishes made to them; can hear prayers directed to them 10. draw a living spirit out of their body as a “living ghost” for sunset-sunrise 11. manifest phantasmal, plasmic objects or weaponry 12. summon tongues and balls of pale, clinging grave-flame
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