Lone Knight

So you want a Dark Sun-esque setting of your own, eh?

At the minimum concept, for an Athas-like sword-and-sorcery post-apocalyptic (how many hyphens are we gonna use here) world, you need:

- a hellblasted desert, courtesy of the apocalypse
- psionics
- using magic is more difficult, destructive, kind of sucks, and gets you In Deep Trouble like as not
- despotic city-states with themes to fight and free the people of
- one Walking Apocalypse kaiju-type monster or entity
- non-metal weapon rules if you insist and you hate yourself


( let's throw some inspirational stuff around to get things started! )

I am actually not at all fond of the traditional "traps", by which I mean various mechanical-or-otherwise contrivances placed just to fuck up an unwitting PC's (and sometimes player's) day -- especially when there's so many littered around, or the traps are so all-encompassing, the suspension bridge of my disbelief just snaps in half when I try to fathom how a dungeon's inhabitants function at all.

( nonetheless, rambling and a table under here ~ )

Tales of adventurer's antics get around! Especially if the party -- or some extremely notable bodies in the party -- has done some really spectacular (or gnarly) things!

Which means that given enough spectacular and gnarly things, dear adventurers, you might actually start to be recognized. Which can be good or bad! *lol*


( * a small bit of Lindwyrmy rules for that * )

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 ~

( Lindwyrm Lockbox )

A thought that marched hand-in-glove with my tinkering with a B/X cultivator class (which took me the better part of a year to actually commit to and I can’t believe I’m admitting that ye gods), and that I kept on coming back over and over again, involved spirit stones.

Spirit stones (lingshi) are fancy mystical stones — or jewels, or crystals, or some kind of bit of shiny valuable rock/crystal/whatever — that have a pile of descriptions (or none at all, lol) in cultivation novels. They’re basically storehouses of spiritual energy, and cultivators can use them as energy sources or —

— this is the bit that I kept circling back to —

— to boost their cultivation level.

There’s even varying grades or levels of power for these stones, and apparently some series have higher powered versions also (“god stones” and the like) although I haven’t spotted those yet myself. Cultivators hoard spirit stones, use them like candy, treat them as currency, squabble over sources of them, and on and on. Sometimes they, or jewels a lot like them, get found inside the carcasses of powerful monsters or demons, even.

I bet you can see where I’m going with this ~


Spirit Stones and Experience Points

There’s a whole pile of extra bits and bobs that could get piled onto the spirit stone concept as applied to OSR stuff, but the crux that I’ve been rolling around is this:

If treasure = xp up to this point, but say you don’t want to just run a treasure hunter kind of campaign — or you can’t wrap your brain around just what the PCs are doing with that treasure to justify the xp gains, or the treasure piles are just piling up, well, why not decouple it altogether?

Have piles of normal loot for awesome normal loot reasons.

Have finding — or claiming, or stealing, or carving out — and then consuming spirit stones as the actual source of experience points.

You could even make up a set of tiers for grades of stones (type, colour, names, whatever) like in the source material; low-grade stones have 50 or 100 or whatever xp in them, sage-grade stones have thousands or more. Give them different appearances, and go to town.

– some combat encounters could give a lot of spirit stones/xp, if the target is likely to carry them. some, not so much. choose wisely.

– that said, think of the stone or stones likely to be found in the roiling innards of a mighty dragon, or condensed in the core of an ancient, sorcerous undead prince, or or or

Which brings me to notion number two!

Claiming stones from innately powerful creatures is one way to get powerful stones fast, if the GM enables that, yeah. But what if there’s a side effect of shortcutting one’s way through the shortcut, and too many spirit stones (too much xp) gained from a specific kind of source twists or changes you.

Consume too many demonic cores, start to take on demonic traits. That probably won’t go over well with a lot of people. Might be better to be cautious.

I’d probably decide on some particular ratio of “flavoured” xp vs. “standard” xp.


And yes, yes, I know, this sounds like some unholy amalgamation of “gold = xp” and “milestones” and an esoteric economy straight from satan’s arsecrack, but I’m still tempted to beat out a few more details and try it sometime, lol.

Imagine the possibilities! Players might even be tempted to slow their characters’ progressions (not consuming stones) in order to use them to wheel and deal and influence by trade/barter/etc etc. And that’s without layering on any other possible uses for the things …

Dragons! Big scaly (or feathery or what have you) beasties with maws of sharp teeth and a tendency towards breathing gouts of flame, venom, or the gods know what at you. Tangling with a dragon, violently or otherwise, can be a Big Thing. A Big Thing with, depending on the dragon, a Big Payoff.

Sometimes it even comes from the dragon itself. It might not even mean slaying the beastie!

Which is good, because some dragons may be like unto gods.


So how does this work?

Here are a few possibilities.


Gifts Granted Freely

To seal a pact, to grant a boon to a loyal friend or follower or worshiper, to give a representative the power to act in their name, to demonstrate power, to sow a little chaos here and there — there’s any number of reasons a dragon might grant a token to one of the “lesser” folk. Whether reshaping an existing object or shaping one wholesale from its own flesh and spirit, the dragon creates a gift for its chosen recipient.

Many of these tokens are weapons, but not all of them. If you don’t have a form in mind, you can always roll for it:

01. Weapon
02. Weapon
03. Armour
04. Grimoire
05. Grimoire
06. Ornament
07. Instrument or Tool
08. Weapon

And also for the mark that the object bears to show its origin:

01. Carved from the dragon’s fang(s)
02. Sheathed in the dragon’s shed scales or other plumage
03. Sports one or more dragoncrysts
04. Contains dragonsblood ampoule
05. Carved from dragon’s horn or talon
06. Dyed or enameled with dragonsblood

Needless to say, all such tokens are finely made specimens. (Dragon magic can do wonderful things.) They aren’t unbreakable, however, unless granted by a dragon of divine power — which isn’t to say that even a more “mundane” token may not show some quirk such as a faint glow, slowly reshaping itself or its ornamentation over time, or slight changes of size and proportion to suit its current owner.

But what does such a token do? The possibilities are endless and boil down to the whims of the dragon in question (and the GM, of course *lol*); here are some basic ideas to get things started:

01. +2 (or more!) to attacks made with it, or while bearing it, as appropriate
02. Grants Advantage when used (or when used for a specific purpose, whether hunting sorcerers, penning the perfect sonnet, or making a first impression)
03. Absorbs incoming energies aligned with those of the dragon (fire, light, death, winter, passion …)
04. Grants (additional) protection equivalent to a specific armour type, such as chain or fullplate
05. Grants the ability to cause injuries that wound like flame, frost, venom, or other draconic energies
06. Will heal one wound, even a lethal one (or one given wound within a certain time cycle)
07. Grants an additional sense or senses (nightsight, magic sensitivity, draconic sensitivity, direction sense, tracking ability …)
08. Protects against a certain type of enchantment or affliction (flame magic, poison, paralysis, mind-tampering …), or grants Advantage against it
09. Allows the owner to take on a draconic form
10. Opens a portal to a specific location or locations
11. Will produce a certain amount of a specific substance (bread, raw metal, stormwinds, water, sunlight), or for a specific amount of time, daily
12. Allows owner to tap into the dragon’s knowledge or wisdom
13. Grants the ability to cast a specific spell or spells as if learned, once a day at maximum efficiency
14. Owner’s magic is resisted at Disadvantage by a specific type of target or targets
15. Subjects of the token (injured, touched by, marked by, they hear it, etc as appropriate) are magically “stained” by it and may be tracked by the owner
16. Grants the ability to communicate with spirits and shades of all types, or other unusual subjects, such as animals
17. Owner is always clean, groomed and generally immaculate-looking
18. Deal maximum damage with an attack involving the token (or, once a day, or once a battle; or a certain number of times a day, or after spending one’s own essence)
19. Grants unusual physical capability, such as aquatic adaptation, flight, burrowing, or resistance to a specific hostile environment
20. Increases one or two attributes by anywhere from 1 to 3

Gifts granted by a draconic token reflect the dragon bestowing the gift — a martially-inclined beast will favour weapons or armour or other such things, a reclusive scaly scholar will gift sources of knowledge or means of defense, a flamedrake a gift of fire, and so on. In many cases a token’s gift or gifts will echo the abilities of the dragon as well, be it elemental affinity, breath weapon, unique sorceries or even the dragon’s own famed feats.

Similarly, a token’s power reflects that of its creator. A young beast is not about to grant a gift loaded down with half a dozen abilities, no matter how much it wishes otherwise — and a gift from an elder dragon means the favour, and attention, of such a vast and powerful creature.

A dragon cannot be magically or physically coerced into making such a token. It must be freely given, of the dragon’s own choice. A dragon is always aware of its gifts, and may glean a vague sense of location, presence, and purpose put to with a bit of concentration.


Bloodmarked

A canny dragon knows that the lesser folk are just as covetous as any drake can be. A wise dragon keeps its gifts from falling into the hands of any random creature that may take advantage.

There’s a way around these troubles, to a certain extent. If the gifting dragon crafts its token to be bloodmarked, only those who bear its mark may make use of the token’s benefits, while all others wield a finely-made object and nothing more.

Some dragons make this an unseen, spiritual marking but most prefer to drive the point home more viscerally, as much a test of the would-be recipient’s resolve as a proper binding. Anointed with the dragon’s blood — a draft of which must also be swallowed, fresh from draconic flesh — that one is now bloodmarked and their new gift responds to the diffusion of the draconic donor’s power and will through the giftee’s body.

Whether the mark will pass on to their chosen’s descendants is a matter of draconic choice in the moment of marking. It’s generally considered courteous to let them know one way or the other (and sometimes that’s even the point).


Torn From The Fallen

But — the notes above are not quite true. There is a way to claim such treasures from a dragon against its will — or one such, at least, a single token from a single draconic source.

It’s not pleasant, and it begins with the death of the dragon in question.

Through flensing butchery, darkling alchemy, and necropotent sorceries, a dragon’s fading, fleeing power may be bound into a token made by another’s hands. All such objects are crafted from the dragon’s bones, in their entirety or nearly so, and should they bear any ornamentation at all it is of black-scorched inscriptions, bloody enamel and gory dragoncrysts.

These are not pleasant things to look upon, no matter how finely crafted they may be.

They also come with a price for tearing draconic gifts away along with the dragon’s life. All such balegifts grant at least two abilities, and are Advantage weapons against dragons, but also inflict one or more afflictions unto their owner. Some possibilities include:

01. Heal at half the usual rate
02. Constant nightmares, affecting social interactions (-2 modifier)
03. Vulnerable to a specific form of injury (an element, poison, necromantic magic, bleeding …), taking twice damage
04. Haunted by the slaughtered dragon’s restless shade
05. 1-in-6 chance of berserking in combat or under duress until subdued or there are no targets
06. Will rise as undead horror if driven to brink of death

Balegifts may also be bloodmarked, if the first owner consumes the dragon’s blood and at least a sliver of its heart or pearl. On the one hand, this will always bind the token to the owner and also their bloodline; on the other, they will never rid themselves of the acquired afflictions.


We Know Of You

Any dragon that sees a pact token — let alone a balegift — will know exactly what it is and very well may also know exactly who granted the token in the first place, simply by looking at it. This can have some immediate and terrible repercussions in the latter case!


Life And Death

Yes, it is possible for a living dragon to bestow its blessing and then later be killed and butchered to have it stolen from them.

Yes, a bestowing dragon might then become some sort of undead horror later. Such an abomination can still sense its given gifts.

Or other such interesting situations.

Just what may happen? Well, that’s hard to generalize, now isn’t it ~?

So if all your soul has been traded away (or fallen off, or been eaten, or you tore it all out, or it was burned up, or any number of possibilities really), and that didn’t just end you (because perhaps a body just might keep moving without a soul), what else might happen?

Nothing pleasant, honestly.

You might become a mindless creature, an empty husk driven by nothing but a nagging hunger and a wisp of memory. Far too many courts of aethera notables keep such wretches as guard-beasts and hunters, with the most sluggish considered suitable only for simple brute labour.

That’s a fairly common fate.

Or you might get to hold onto your sense of self. Your soul may be empty, you may feel — you may be — as fragile as a blown-glass bubble, and you may hunger for what you’ve lost, but you retain mind and will and you have choices. You can chase after what you’ve lost, for one, or you may become a scavenger — or predator — of soulstuff of your own accord, or perhaps you choose a path of agonizing asceticism, or …

Sometimes, that latter fate may even overtake one who still clings to some portions of their soul. Which does protect against becoming a husk, at least. Even if you lose the last remnants of your soul, you are assured to keep your awareness.


If you do become one of the Faded, what does that mean in practical terms?

– magic or other effects that target the soul no longer work on you, either because you no longer have one or because the scrap you have left is too withered to be affected
– you can sense the presence of loose soulstuff close by with a Psyche test (Wis check), unless it’s warded or protected in some way
– you may choose to cause soul-rending instead of physical injury when you attack a target, with a 1-in-6 chance of a recoverable fragment of soul lingering afterwards. (provided your target has a soul to begin with.)

That’s the neutral-to-positive points.

There’s more negative ones, naturally.

– first and foremost is the hunger. you are at -1 to all tests due to the emptiness inside your self, which you can abate for a time by devouring soulstuff; the more, and the more powerful, the longer you can last, from a few hours for the simplest shards to a month or more for soul portions drawn from an influential, resplendent, powerful being.
– even though your self is still intact, your memory has taken a beating; you’ve lost up to a quarter of your memories, and recalling significant events or knowledge requires a Psyche test
– your empty self is unnerving and offputting, giving your Disadvantage on social interactions unless with close confederates or those sympathetic to your plight
– you heal poorly; normal healing occurs at half the usual rate, while magical or other unusual forms fail half the time.

[there are no tests or percentages or the like given for becoming one of the Faded, for a very simple reason: some may want these fates to be a common sword to hang over soul-barterers’ heads; other may wish these to be rare birds indeed; yet others may wish to discard the idea altogether. as always, set the odds to your own discretion — and make sure everyone playing is equally comfortable with whatever is decided.]

Needless to say, the denizens of the Manifold Palaces are seldom pleased to find one of the Faded loose in their domains …

Spellcasting always has a cost, right? — whether it’s “spell slots” or a risk of intangible injury or increasing fatigue or chipping off one’s soul bit by bit, there’s always something. And as long as there’s something, enterprising sorcerers (and just about anyone else tossing magic around here and there and everywhere) will look for ways around that cost.

Offering up some options for arcane catalysts is one way to do that in a game — and liven up treasure troves and/or siphon away hoarded funds in the process.

To use a catalyst, which will power a spell for you:

– the catalyst must be in-hand or at least deliberately touched by the caster
– 1d4 measures or discrete objects are required per spell (or per spell level, if desired and if the system uses spell levels or equivalent)
– if not a discrete object (a rose, a stone, etc), one measure usually roughly equals one pennyweight

Of course, there’s no doubt some special quality about these already special materials that makes a sample a suitable catalyst; there’s also no doubt that spellslingers will pay handsomely for them … or resort to more underhanded means.


Some sample catalysts:

01. phoenix egg-myrrh
02. angel’s tears
03. halo shard
04. tongue of skyflame
05. cobra-knight’s pearl
06. bloodamber
07. nugget of lunargent
08. blue rose of summer
09. alicorn sliver
10. distillate of chaos
11. voidspine
12. viridian maple key
13. nugget of solaurum
14. helljade coin
15. dragonsbreath
16. imperial bone
17. elemental carbuncle
18. sanctified skull-moss
19. draconitias stone
20. golden fleece

Something I poke at on occasion is oversized (“dire”, “grand”, etc) weapons.

Because yes, sometimes I just want to play Cloud for a while, and I’m not even sorry.

So how to go about it with most of the games I’ve been poking at lately? (Exalted, of course, has this answer baked in already, so it can doodle in the corner over there for a while.) What needs to be covered to fit a sword that’s more like a sharpened steel ironing board into a game?

The way I see it, you need:

– the ironing-board-sized sword (or whatever)
– how its going to be wielded
– what it’s going to do
– what other results/effects

Now, the last thing I want is anything complicated, and while I could just try to bolt on Exalted’s reasoning, it’s fairly intrinsic to Exalts-as-existing-in-universe so that could get a little weird just about anywhere else. (but hold that thought for another time. lol.) I want something fairly simple, so I can apply it to OSE or Black Hack or Wandering Jewel Moons or whatever; sort of like my scratch rules for adding mecha.

So, I think I’ll tinker around with the following.

– A “grand” weapon adds a die of the appropriate type to its damage. Big chopper based on a standard sword in OSE? 2d8. This does still have a low end, but even slabs of metal can just graze.

– You cannot deal subdual damage with a “grand” weapon. (come on, now.)

So how to introduce these? Maybe

– If your system has any kind of class or other abilities, make “Grand Weapon Wielder” an optional choice. Replace one of the Warrior abilities in TBH; make it a selectable Trait in Wandering Jewel Moons; add it to the list of OSE Fighter combat options from Carrion Crawler #1 or let it replace a feature from the Cavalier or Paladin. You get the idea.

But what if your Fighter is a basic Fighter type, with no extras? Or if you don’t want someone to pay for the ability mechanically in quite that way?

– Then I suppose you can say a Strength/Body/whatever minimum is needed; say 17-18 on the usual 3d6 possibility. Maybe 16-18 or even 15, you want PCs to be able to do this or why put it in there as an option?

Yes, it’s a lot of damage. Yes, that’s the entire point.

What these behemoths will do, though, even if their wielder knows what they’re doing, is get in the way the rest of the time. Even if you can and know how to carry the thing, that slab is big, awkward, and intractible.

Which means they eat up encumbrance like a mofo.

Play a game with equipment/encumbrance slots? A Grand weapon eats at least two. Probably three. Definitely twice a normal weapon of its type, for sure.

Track encumbrance by weight? The thing weighs a shitton. This will vary by actual weapon of course, but come on now, the Buster Sword is surely easily comparable to a pile of armour in weight at the very least.

And if you want to be devilish, say if Grand weapons are enchanted (if they are enchanted at all) they have a high chance of being sentient if not sapient. And willful. Lol.

Not all dabblers in the arts of death confine themselves to flesh and bone, or even to the rarified essence of the restless unliving soul; a rare few find themselves enraptured by the rarest of manifestations, the unique intersection of death and soul and prayer and emotion that comes to a head when a beloved one is laid to rest on a funeral pyre.

Sometimes that pyre burns so fiercely — carries so much of its burden to mingle with the grief and the yawning finality of the afterlife — that its flames absorb all, and in the depths of the dancing fires something else catches alight.

That something is pyreflame, and its pale strange fires are valued and abhorred.

A strange substance, it is. Flickering like flames, it casts off a foxfire phosphorescence like a sheen across its bright blaze; and it blazes in colours of pale green, greenish golden, faint blue or a ghostly white. There’s an eerie solidity to pyreflame, a sense of clinging, syrupy presence, an almost jelly-like consistency that nonetheless slips through the fingers — and slip it may, without harm, because pyreflame does not burn living flesh. It feeds on bone, and only bone.

A swift harvester may count themselves lucky if they recover more than a thimbleful or two from any given fiery altar, gathering the clinging tongues of pyreflame into iron or crystal or stiffened silk. Of course, the gathered mourners may not approve of this behaviour …

But what does it do, this strange amalgamation of essence and prayer and spirit, of afterlives fair and foul?

– A dram of pyreflame will fuel any magic that involves the soul, the spirit, prayers or petitions or calls to higher (or lower) powers, instead of relying on the caster’s own reserves.

– Perhaps paradoxically, it will both fuel necromantic magic likewise, offering a greater animating spark to the unliving produced by such rites, and will cause any weapon smeared with at least a dram (more, for larger weapons) to cause critical and irreparable injury to the undead.

– A dram of pyreflame will also grant great restorative power to the healing arts, which will be cast at their maximum potential without fail.

– One may consume pyreflame, with unpredictable results:

01. Gain partial memories of the deceased
02. Gain one of the skills or talents of the deceased
03. Purge all impurities and weaknesses but be vulnerable to banishment or castigation as the unliving are
04. Attract the attention of one or more powers to whom mourning prayers were addressed (but sense the content of those prayers)
05. You now sense the presence of the newly and the restless dead
06. Develop the need to feed on at least a pound of human bone each week
07. You can, if you exert yourself, open the way to the underworld, but must pay in consumption of bone and blood
08. Burn out half of your allotted lifespan in a blaze of frenzied, aethereal enlightenment

Of course, there is also the rumour that, if enough pyreflame is consumed — and one is not overwhelmed or driven mad or mummified while living or any number of other whispered possibilities — one may catalyze the prayer-stuff and soul-stuff and lingering life-and-death and become a veritable small godling in one’s own right, capable of hearing prayer and snatching them the very air to, perhaps, grant, or to feed on as your rightful repast, or fuel your sorceries, or all of these things.

One does have to wonder what existing powers may think of such a thing.

Or, for that matter, the loved ones of those whose final travels you stole your quickening flames from.