Lone Knight

( Seven Swords: a setting for Lindwyrm and other adventure games )

Seven Swords by E. A. Bisson is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

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.

Sometimes dungeons get … weird.

Different.

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. )

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.

Anyway, on to the beasties --

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*

Finally, a new new post *lol*

Twenty new critters of various kinds, from the tiny to the tremendous ~


( beasties here lol )

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

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)

I challenged myself, late last year, to write an rpg that was (a take on) a "Basic D&D" that fit into one minizine printed on one sheet of paper.

A few months ago I actually did it, and the result is Lindwyrm. I'm actually pretty tickled with it.

Print-and-fold versions can be found here, along with Lindwyrm Lockbox which I will hopefully be posting the text of tomorrow.



( Lindwyrm )

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

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

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

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

I like putting jellies in my games. Like, a lot. (they count as oozes! they do! the ochre jelly has been around forever! and the gelatinous cube is just a big square one! *lol*) Which means every once in a while I write up some new jellies, or give some old ones a fresh lick of paint, or both.

Not really anything fancy as a preface here, just jellies. Because jellies.

Jellies jellies jellies. Lol.


Blossom Jelly
1 HD
A translucent, creeping gelatinous drop, pale pink or deep rose or reddish violet, marked with petal-shaped patches of transparency.
– 1d4 + Evanescence: struck with delicate sorrow, test to take any action, 1d6 actions; dissolves organics

Dream Jelly
1 HD
An effervescent oval of perpetually flowing jelly, transparently amber-rose-violet and spangled with an oily iridescent sheen.
– 1d4 + Waking Dream: dazed and hallucinating dreamlike visions, 2d4 actions

Peacock Jelly
2 HD
What a surprisingly enchanting sight; who expected a jelly to be such a lovely blue-green colour, to have such a golden sheen, to shimmer so iridescently …
– 1d4 dissolve; Fascinate – all within 20’ stand staring at the jelly’s play of colours; Fission — when hp depleted, splits into two 1 HD jellies

Rune Jelly
2 HD
This rippling mass of translucent, flame-coloured cytoplasm sports glimmering runes and glyphs that flare to life on its surface and fade out again.
– 1d6 dissolve; consumes enchanted objects; Spellspawn — immune to spells, spells cast at jelly are absorbed, released as a 1 HD jelly next action

Crystal Jelly
4 HD
Transparent, colourless, glittering — like a great crystal orb, flattened slightly — sliding along the ground … and then suddenly sprouting shining blades.
– 2d4 pummel or gel shard; Volley — launches 1d4 blades of dense sharp gel ‘glass’, 1d6 each; dissolves crystal, glass, gemstones

Dracojelly
4 HD
This dense, gelatinous ovoid flows with purpose, and its slightly translucent mass is a single deep colour webbed with markings that make it almost look scaled.
– 2d4 rasping; Exhalation — blast of energy-infused gel, fire/acid/cold/electricity/etc, 3d6, every third action; immune to damage type dealt by Exhalation; consumes metals

Void Jelly
6 HD
Somehow, a mass of light-enveloping blackness and a translucent gelatinous shadow, simultaneously. Still faster than it should be, and very bad news.
– 2d8 entropic pseudopod; consumes everything; Engulfing Nothingness — two successful attacks engulf a target in the jelly’s mass, target is lost 3d4 actions later; immune to mundane damage