Adventures in the City of the Dead

I am trying a new approach to dealing with sessions that multiple players have to miss in my new Waterdeep campaign.  If I know in advance that multiple players can't make it, I am running some one shots in the same campaign for a second set of higher level characters.  Basically each player has a 1st level character (now 2nd level) for sessions with a quorum and a different 10th level character to run if it is just going to be a couple of players in attendance for a one off.  The high level characters are exploring the same areas and themes and the players will learn things that shed light on the lower level campaign.  We have six players so if just one or maybe two players are going to miss I would probably still run the lower level characters, as happened the first two sessions.  As the lower level characters level up I will have the higher level characters level occasionally so we will get to play the complete range of levels (I very much doubt that we will ever even reach level 10 with our lower level characters at the rate we play).

For session three I knew in advance that several players would be absent so we had our first 10th level running.

In attendance:
Shashi playing Level 10 Human Barbarian female "Nidalee" (aka Sir-jumps-around-and-kills-me-in-my-face-a-Lot)

Mike playing Level 10 Human Shaman female "Imzel"  (sister of Nidalee) can see into other realities

Elliot playing Level 10 Human Wizard "The Third Incarnate of Darkon the Bold" - dedicated to service, perfecting selfless nature

These three were hired by the city guard to supplement a full moon night patrol of the City of the Dead, accompanying a small watch patrol and four young boys (members of the Guild of Chandlers and Lamplighters) and their useless old master.  The Guild of Chandlers and Lamplighters holds a lucrative contract with the city to light the candles in the extra-dimensional tombs that Waterdeep uses to stow its recently departed.  Last full moon something terrible happened and a watch patrol was killed during the night rounds, and although the Guild representatives survived they were so terrified and shocked that it was impossible to glean what had happened to them.  The party is hired to prevent a recurrence this month under the full moon.

City of the Dead - vast public gardens and tombs open in the day, closed off at night and usually some minor undead action.  The last several full moons there have been more powerful undead of all descriptions arising.

We jumped right into the action as the more perceptive party members saw a handful of ghouls lurking in the shrubbery across the path from the entrance.  Not waiting for the ghouls, the party jumped right into action.  Nidalee leaped up into a tree and then over onto the roof of a tomb, spotting another group of ghouls and ghasts.  The party dispatched of the ghouls and ghasts in just a few rounds, and in just a few more rounds took care of some mummies that joined the party halfway through the fight.  One hairy moment came when Galaunt, a particularly foolhardy young lamplighter, engaged a ghoul in hand to hand combat.  The ghoul managed to grab Galaunt and tried to run off with him but disaster was narrowly averted.  The city watch proved pretty much useless during all of this.  Nidalee broke a tooth off the ghoul that grabbed young Galaunt and fashioned it into a necklace with a strip of leather.  He surreptitiously gave it to Galaunt when the old master was not looking and told him to wear it as a good luck talisman.  

The party then escorted the lamplighters into the House of the Homeless, one of the City of the Dead's extradimensional tombs.  A vast two story mausoleum with a row of low steps leading to its high metal gates.  Cleaned bones are stored catacomb style inside, and when the building was full an ancient wizard named Anacaster created a Gate to an "uninhabited pocket dimension".  This Gate leads to an apparently infinite network of twisting natural passages and caverns, many of them containing bones of strange and alien creatures.  The passages seem to be natural, but the rock is not known to this world.  The city has barred off a section of the passages and uses them to store the bones of all the dead of Waterdeep who do not own (by merit,  purchase or membership in a noble or wealthy family) a place in another tomb.  The bones are cleaned off in a pool of torquoise acid that burbles in an orange mud pit in the tunnels.  It takes less than an hour to reduce a fresh corpse to a pile of clean bones in the pool.

The lamplighters are paid to light and replace large candles in glass sconces that provide dim illumination to the areas of the tunnels used by the city.  The rounds begin with a twisting walk down and over, past several side passages, to a square gallery surrounding an open shaft down.  Niches carved in the wall twisting down around the edge of the square gallery hold the skulls of the dead.  If a name is known, it is engraved in the rock under the skull.  Imzel detected an open connection or Gate to a plane of necrotic ooze, slime and abomination somewhere far down the open shaft, far below the areas used by the city to store skulls.

Candles lit around the skulls, the lamplighters led on to the first of three large open chambers used to store the other bones.  This first cave has not been used to store new bones for centuries.  Piles of bones are mounded up, interlocking, to form cubes of like bones.  One cube of interlocked arm bones, stacked high.  One cube of interlocked femurs, stacked high.  Small bones, vertebrae, phalanges, are tucked into gaps around the larger bones.

As the lamplighters made their way around the perimeter of the room, the party heard what appeared to be the sound of combat coming from down a locked and barred passageway.  The party talked the watch commander (despite his misgivings) into unlocking the gate so they could investigate. They saw three oddly clad human males clumsily wielding swords battling a bunch of skeletons.    I am pretty sure it was Darkon the Bold who incinerated a bunch of skeletons with a spell and motioned the humans to join them.  They turned out to be nice enough sorts, three very confused young professionals from Florence (Italy) who are into what they called "urban exploring" and must have taken a very wrong turn somewhere.  Alessandro, Luca and Guiseppe had been lost for days, and picked up the longswords along their way to defend themselves from undead skeletons that seemed to be everywhere.  Darkon the Bold, with the aid of a Comprehend Languages spell, figured out enough of what happened to the three that he knew they were a long, long way from home.  The three Italians accompanied the party and lamplighters as they continued on their rounds, with the understanding that the watch would take them to meet representatives of the Lords of Waterdeep who could presumably help them along their way back home.

Continuing on, the route led down and around, deeper into the labyrinth of passages, constantly descending in depth, passing many barred off passages.  The party noticed a strange green slime or ectoplasm that was seeping out of the solid rock.  The farther down they went the more of it there was seeping out.  Imzel could see an astral connection to the necrotic plane of ooze and slime, a slim astral thread leading from each mote of slime out through the Gate detected earlier, down below the skull gallery and beyond to a necromantic aspect of the god Ghaunaduar, god of Abominations and patron of oozes and Slimes.  Imzel was able to divine that the slime could take over pre-existing sentient undead and deliver them into the control of this aspect of Ghaunaduar.  Imzel collected some of the slime in a glass flask.

Hurrying on through the rounds now as the patches of slime were growing rapidly, the party made it through the second large catacomb chamber (also not in current use, but only filled a few decades ago) without incident.  The ooze continued to multiply as the candle lighting expedition continued on to the lowest point used by the city, the third and currently used large catacomb cave.  Just before the passage curved around a corner to reach the catacomb cave, the party noticed that the gate barring a tunnel exiting to the south had been torn asunder.  Something large and covered in the green ectoplasmic slime had burst through the gate and entered the catacomb cave ahead of the party, judging by the splatters of slime.  It had left a palpable aura of cold and undeath in its wake.

At this point the party had the tremendous foresight to cast a magical ward against undead sealing the tunnel to the south from the passage, to prevent further ooze covered undead creatures from coming up behind them.

The party proceeded into the large catacomb cave and discovered a two headed bone naga ouroboros lurking in the stacks of bones, a giant snake skeleton with a huge skull at each end capped with a spiked bony knob for slamming into things.  They also quickly discovered it could shoot lightning bolts as it responded to Darkon the Bold's magical assault with one of its own.  Nidalee jumped all over the place and made the bone naga regret its dark unbirth.  The bone naga animated a whole bunch of mismatched skeletons from the bones in the room, but Darkon wiped them out immediately with a spell.  Another bone naga tried to join the fray but was prevented by the magical wards - curses!  The party prevailed and discovered two glowing sapphires in the skulls of the bone naga which could be hurled as magical grenades, with an effect identical to a fireball (8d6) but generating a sphere of lightning.

And that was pretty much that.  No encounters on the long upward twisting passages leading back up to the Gate.  We paused there.

We may pick up at pretty much the same place the next time we play the high level characters, there was another pretty cool and probably more interesting encounter and area that I had planned which we didn't get to farther on, involving prepping the Hall of Heroes for a burial in the morning.  The Hall of Heroes has a Gate to a dimension of endless grasslands, and soldiers and great warriors are buried there.  A high ranking ranger, a warden of the wilderness north of Waterdeep, died recently fighting a giant demon shadow bear that had been terrorizing the north.  The ranger apparently killed the demon in the same moment he was killed, but the demon took the ranger's soul with him in death and the ranger could not be raised back to life.  His funeral is scheduled for tomorrow morning and the lamplighters are supposed to prep the grassland dimension beyond the Gate for the funeral by cutting back the grass on and around the paths and around the grave mounds.

Another high level scenario I have plotted are a rescue/retrieval mission to snatch the young daughter of a noble house from the temple of the Cult of Ghaunaduar in a sub level of Undermountain (the young daughter is a willing convert to the cult, her family had paid someone to infiltrate the cult but their plant couldn't talk the daughter into leaving the cult - now the family wants to hire some badasses to break their daughter out whether she wants to go or not).

I also have some sessions planned in the very distant past, in the third age (prior to the existence of Gods, Devils and Demons and the present which is the fourth age, there were three earlier and godless ages).  A lot of the first two lower level sessions involved learning about relics of ancient Abolon, a kingdom of the third age, and encountering cultists of Abolon active in Waterdeep today.  I have some fun scenarios involving a time gate back to old Abolon.

May you bathe in the red light of Abolon's ever-open eye.

Giambattista's Megadungeon

Doing some organizing in my D&D folder on my computer today I came across this incredible megadungeon map drawn by Giambattista Nolli in 1748.  I think I came across this one day while Google image searching for floorplans and recognized it for the masterpiece in dungeon construction that it is.  You can visit an interactive zoomable navigable version of the map here (thanks UO!).

I am going to use portions of this for the ruins of ancient Abolon that my 5e Waterdeep campaign players are likely going to be discovering soon under the sewers.

This is just a snippet - the full map is way too big to paste here.

As promised, more maps - Blue Opal House

I promised my 5e Waterdeep Campaign group that I would post the above-ground, more-or-less public levels of the Blue Opal House before our next session. 

One of these days soon I will finish up the recaps of session 1 and 2 and that will included some backstory on the Blue Opal House.  Until then no further explanation of these scribbles will be posted here besides a note that the stairs between levels 2 and 3 were accidentally drawn in reversed direction (they should be leading down from level 3 to level 2, and likewise up from level 2 to level 3).  

Blue Opal House Roof

Blue Opal House 4th floor

Blue Opal House - 3rd floor

Blue Opal House - 2nd floor

Blue Opal House - Ground Level

Starting Friends

The first session of my new 5e Waterdeep campaign is tonight - getting excited!  Just finished up a table for determining some random "starting friends" that each PC will already know in the city.  Here is it in  one page .PDF format.

Table headings: You became friends how?; How would you describe the relationship?; Something unusual?; Useful contact that they have?; What physical features stick out?

Here is the .PDF printable version of the massive list of THOUSANDS of canon NPC names from Forgotten Realms novels that someone at Candlekeep compiled and I formatted to print out for the names I need to generate in game:  Forgotten Realms Name List .PDF Format

Three Magical Items

Pouch of Concealment

Twisting the jewel clasp of this pouch in a particular pattern creates an illusory double of the pouch’s contents at that moment.  This illusion will persist even if the contents are removed or other items are added.  The illusion is all that can be seen if the pouch is opened, and a save is granted only if an item is placed into the pouch or it is reached into (Intelligence Save DC12).  Twisting the clasp again will dispel the illusion.

Crossbow of Illumination

Bolts glow brightly for one hour after being fired from this crossbow, shedding bright light in a 20’ radius and dim light for an additional 20’.

Quarterstaff of Pain

This staff does not do real damage, but on a successful hit causes intense hallucinatory pain, requiring a CON save at DC = unmodified attack roll to take any action the following round except writhe in pain.  If the save is failed by 2 or more the victim also drops prone to the ground.

All Art By Moi

Like Lewis Carroll on acid with Lovecraft thrown in

The Fungus Forest was featured on the Roll For Initiative podcast.  I think they gave us a new tagline:

This is like Lewis Carroll on acid with Lovecraft thrown in.

Check it out!

Three Scrolls

1. Scroll of Release: Reading this scroll aloud unlocks all non-magical locks and unties all knots within a 10’ radius.  The magic consumes the scroll.

2. Scroll of Judgement: Reading this scroll aloud causes all within earshot to believe that a declared target is guilty of a specified crime (Save DC BLANKITY).  A new save is allowed each time new evidence is brought forward that exonerates the target.  The scroll can only be used once, but anyone who has failed the save will believe the scroll to contain damning evidence upon examination.  Anyone who makes the save sees the used scroll as completely blank.

3. Scroll of Temporal Passage: Up to five willing targets are transported forward in time exactly 12 hours, reappearing in exactly the same spot (or displaced the shortest possible distance if something is now blocking that spot).  No time elapses from the perspective of the temporal passengers.  The scroll disappears after use only to reappear in the same place in 1d100 days.  It can be used repeatedly.

Scroll by Moi

Ring of Fluidity

Ring of Fluidity

Once placed on the finger this ring can only be removed after death (unless Remove Curse is used).  It transforms the internal structure of its wearer under the skin, replacing muscle, bone, and organs with an opaque green goo.  Food is placed in the usual orifice and dissolved internally (nutrition requirements stay the same); nothing is defecated.  The ring wearer can squeeze through finger-width cracks and finger-diameter holes.  The ring wearer no longer ages.

Tusked Demon Mask of the Phoenix Society

This mask was fashioned from the flayed face of a minor demon lord named Anshagali whose soul was bound into the artifact during its making.  The mask has been owned by the Phoenix Society for generations, and is associated with dance regalia of that society including a magnificent cape of purple and green iridescent feathers trimmed with red fox fur (Cape of Speed x2 Movement, +1 Attack) and a woven porcupine-quill chest piece beaded with a radiating geometric sunburst pattern (Chest Piece of Defense AC 2 [17]).

The mask is only worn by the mentally and physically strongest warriors during the private dance ceremonies of the society, particularly at the ceremonies marking initiation into a deeper level of the society, but its existence is well known throughout the tribe because of the tell-tale glowing red eyes of the society members who have worn it.  These warriors are known as the Ashes of the Phoenix and must swear a lifetime vow of celibacy and ascetic living before donning the mask.  Anshagali longs to be freed from the control of the Phoenix Society and constantly whispers in the minds of those unfortunate souls bound to him through chains of ancestral history to steal him from the Phoenix Society House away into the jungle.

Tusked Demon Mask by Emma Nash, Photoshop flames by Carl Nash

Anyone who dons the mask even once gains permanent darkvision to 180' as well as eyes that always glow red in the dark with the strength of a candle (Remove Curse will reverse both conditions).  When the sun is down Anshagali can communicate telepathically with everyone who has ever worn the mask and any of their descendants born after the mask was worn  (nothing short of divine intervention can prevent this).  A strict diet of fish and bland starchy vegetables (no fruits, nothing spicy, no red meat) reduces the volume of Anshagali's whispers to a low murmuring that can be easily ignored.

While wearing the mask, Anshagali grants +2 to STR and DEX, immunity to fire/heat (although cold and water do double damage), and a natural bite and tusk attack for 1d8+2 damage +ongoing 2 HP damage until magical cure or Remove Curse.  All damage dealt by the bite attack (including ongoing) accumulates as charges for the mask on a 1 HP = 1 Charge basis (charges reset with each new wearer).  Charges can be spent as follows:
1 Charge: +1d6 fire damage to any attack (maximum +3d6 to a single attack)
1 Charge: +1 to hit on any attack roll (maximum +3 to a single attack)
5 Charges: 30' cone of fire, 15' wide at apex, bursts from the mask's mouth (5d6, Save for 1/2)
10 Charges: Bursts of fire from the eyes, 100' range, 5d6 (no save)
10 Charges (must be night time): Anshagali Possession - become the fiery incarnation of the imprisoned demon soul for 2d6 rounds.  The body of the mask-wearer completely disappears and is replaced with a hovering ball of fire that crackles around the mask.  The mask wearer gains 50 temporary HP but takes 1d6 damage per round of the possession that is removed from the permanent HP pool.  Instant death results if this damage reduces HP to 0, and the physical body never reappears in this case (completely consumed by the mask).  If the temporary HP are exhausted by attacks or a cumulative total of 25 HP cold or water damage are received, the possession is ended instantly.

While possessed by Anshagali the following attacks can be made (choose one per turn):  Fire Lash x2 attacks, 25' range, 3d6 fire damage and pull/slide the victim up to 10', Save to avoid being knocked prone; Flame Burst 15' radius blast centered on mask, 5d6 (Save for 1/2) and pushed back 10', and knocked prone if Save failed; Fire Sword 5d12 melee
At Will Spell-Like Abilities: Teleport (180' distance max, line of sight to destination required, no chance of failure); Knock/Open Lock; Major Illusion (concentration required to maintain); Silence 15' Radius; Telepathy (180' range);
Once per Possession: Death Gaze, Save or Die, 180' range

A Save is required at the end of the possession, failure allowing Anshagali to posses the individual once a day at any range for 2d6 rounds, during which time Anshagali is in complete control.  A new save is permitted at the end of each day that Anshagli does take active possession, at a cumulative -1 penalty after each subsequent failed save.

Anshagali has INT 17 WIS 9 CHA 20

Anshagali was never the cautious calculated sort as a demon lord and has only grown more impatient and reckless as an artifact mask.

The Most Interesting Treasure Trove In The World

[Fungus Forest text by Lee Reynoldson]

Dark Fey are evil fairies. Like fairies, they are small (six inches) magical creatures with wings. They have small horns, protruding fangs, claws, scaly grey skin, and bat-like wings.

The Dark Fey and their foul creations the Wassermen are evil through and through. Their only
interest is in slaying anyone they come across... especially their neighbors the Draklings. They
cannot be reasoned with and the only communication a party will have with them is being taunted
and threatened.  The Wassermen spend most of their time in the large underground lake and the rest patrolling the underground river system.

High above the ground, carved twenty feet up the wall above the south shore, there are hundreds of tiny cave
mouths. These are the homes of the Dark Fey.

If things go bad they retreat into their tunnels, which are 7-10 inches high and 5 inches wide. The tunnel complex stretches far into the walls, making the Dark Fey relatively safe once they retreat into them.

Clever adventurers may shrink themselves, using magic or the Grow-Shrink Shrooms, to infiltrate the Dark Fey cave system.

The Dark Fey raise tarantula-sized wolf spiders in their cave system. They will attempt to lure intruders deep into the complex to their temple, the large chamber shaped like a spider. The Dark Fey will flee out the far exit of the temple while dozens of wolf spiders attack from their nests in the “arms” of the spider cave.  The Dark Fey keep no treasure in their complex.


Straight from the water near the middle of the north shore of the lake there is a ten-foot cliff leading up into a cave. The Wassermen have covered the surface of the rock in slimy moss to make it treacherously slippery and very difficult to scale. For years the Dark Fey have been hoarding treasure in this cave that they or their Wassermen have salvaged from the Shroomenkin’s dump, stolen from other creatures within the forest, taken from adventurers and pilfered from the surrounding countryside. They spread rumors of their hoard as bait to lure new victims to slay.

Get the Fungus Forest yourself as a pay-what-you-want .PDF with full color illustrations and interior layout at DriveThruRPG.com and find out what other strange delights lurk within!

Fungus Forest - Pay What You Want

The Fungus Forest is available now as a Pay What You Want .PDF on DriveThruRPG.com.  Check it out and download now!

The Fungus Forest is an OSR Compatible adventure location designed for use with Original, Basic and Advanced Editions of the world’s most popular fantasy role-playing game (and their modern simulacra).

Pay what you want for this sprawling 100+ cave complex suitable for low level play.  Please download for free if you cannot pay anything; we want this thing in the hands of gamers, not mouldering away on a DriveThru bookshelf.

Features:

• Unique creatures and magical items, including six feuding Fey factions that will try to pit the party against their rival factions.
• Compatible with most editions of the game; stats are provided in a simple, system-agnostic format with both ascending and descending armor class listed. 
• Maps: 2-Page overview map spread of the caverns; four quadrant maps of sections of the caverns; inset map of the Tiny Tunnels of the Dark Fey; printable black & white single page version of the overview map.
• Full Color art and layout.  
• Ready Reference Appendices: Formatted in black and white with printable margins to enable home printing for easy in-game reference; Appendix I - Random Fungus Generator; Appendix II - Magic Mushrooms of the Fungus Forest; Appendix III - Fungus Forest Bestiary (30+ unique entries); Appendix IV - Printable Fungus Forest Map.
• Bookmarked & Hyperlinked: Fully bookmarked .PDF with a clickable Table of Contents
• Two Formats Available: 2-Page Spread or Single Page .PDF formats available for download.
• Print Edition Coming Soon: The Fungus Forest is currently .PDF only but a print edition is in the works, loaded with more art!

Thanks to osrcompatible.org for the "OSR Compatible" declaration, used under a Creative Commons CC-BY license.

OSR Logo by Stuart Robertson used under a Creative Commons CC-BY License

Fungus Forest (upcoming release)

I am getting close to releasing a product that started kicking and clawing its way to freedom way back in 2009.  I drew a map for the now defunct megadungeon.net project and Lee Reynoldson made an awesome key for the map.  We have kicked around the idea of publishing it in a few different forms over the years but in 2016 the stars aligned and I finally got off my butt and started tackling the editing, art and layout.  Several intensive weeks of work later, we are so close I can taste it!

This is a big project; there are over 100 keyed locations on the map, with 101 unique key entries (some entries covering multiple caves).  Lee wrote a really terrific text for low-level play; each of the Fey factions that live in the magical Fungus Forest will try to pit the party against their rival Fey factions.  Every creature in the Fungus Forest is a unique creation of Lee's (which is a big selling point in my opinion); the Bestiary in the appendices contains nearly 40 new creatures.  And of course, there are tons and tons of magical mushrooms.  You can never have too many magic mushrooms.  It took a LOT of editing work to get the sprawling original 60 page Google Document print-ready, from making sure all stat blocks and abbreviations were standardized to compiling the appendices and of course going over the text with a fine-toothed grammar comb.

I also wanted to make individual quadrant maps in addition to the main overview map, and of course I wanted more art than the couple few monster pictures I drew... so I talked my wife into doodling some awesome mushroom sketches in pen and ink, which I am coloring in PhotoShop.

On top of that, it turns out that doing interior layout is WAY more time consuming than I ever imagined.  I have learned a ton about Adobe InDesign throughout this process and I am very pleased with the way things are shaping up.  A few sample spreads (not necessarily final layout but probably pretty close on these particular pages):

Oh good, we are in the Tomb of Horrors

I just realized that my character in Carter's Lands of Ara campaign is knee deep in the Tomb of Horrors right now.  I have never played or read the classic Tomb of Horrors 1e module, but I have certainly encountered plenty of references to the granddaddy of all deathtrap dungeons.  Well imagine my surprise when I finally tracked down a copy and had a strong sense of déjà vu as soon as I began to look at the map and read the key.  I recognized the long tiled hallway to an archway filled with green mist, and the giant skeletons that popped out of chests, but just to make sure I flipped a few pages... yup, there was the room with spheres on the walls and the room with the four-armed gargoyle statue with one arm broken off.

Our party has been exploring the frickin' tomb of horrors!  No wonder we have been frustrated by that dang dungeon!  We are chasing an ancient vampire, or possibly his not quite as ancient descendant vampire, and this dungeon below the sewers of Kaladar is his home.

I stopped reading the module and had only skimmed it up till that point, but somehow just knowing that we are in the Tomb of Horrors is a mild spoiler.  We had already realized that we needed to proceed with extreme caution in this place, so I don't think it will cause any difference in gameplay.  Still, the knowledge that we teleported ourselves deep into an  unknown section of the tomb of horrors and are trying to work our way back out to an area we have already explored is terrifying!  

Hallucinating Jungle Dogs - Jivaro Tribe pt.2

Dogs are extremely important to the Jivaro, for aid in hunting, protecting the garden crops from rodents, and protecting the house from intruders by warning barks.  The Jivaroan term for dog, Naiwa, is the same word used for jaguar. The Jivaro received dogs as a gift from nunui (earth spirits), so they fall into the women's realm.

When a new litter of pups is born, one of the women of the house sleeps with the bitch and litter to keep the puppies from being possessed by a malevolent spirit.  The woman will breast feed the puppies along with the bitch.  When the puppies mature, they are given the most powerful hallucinogen the Jivaro know (Datura sp.) so the dogs can find a beneficial spirit in their visions to give them power and possibly even make them invulnerable to normal injury and death (although they can still be a victim of sorcery).  

If a man wants to take a dog hunting, he asks one of his wives to accompany him to handle the dog.  The woman, through her connection to nunui, is better able to control the dog and also brings good fortune to the hunt, silently singing to nunui for success in getting game.

At night the dogs are leashed to the bed in the women's side of the house and their slightest barking results in the household head seizing his weapons and preparing to defend the family.

Jivaroan Dog/ Dog of Nunui (other statistics as normal dog)

(variable power depending on the strength of the spirit acquired during Datura hallucination)

Roll 1d6:  1-2: Weak Spirit, 3-5: Normal Spirit, 6: Powerful Spirit

Weak Spirit Dog

HD:2

AC:4 (15)

Bite: 1d6+1

Normal Spirit Dog

HD:3

AC:3 (16)

Bite: 1d6+2

Powerful Spirit Dog

HD: 4

AC: 2 (17)

Bite: 1d8+2

Special: Immune to non-magical weapons and normal injury

Evil Spirit Dog / Demon Dog (Iwanci Naiwa)

Occasionally, despite the best efforts of the women, a puppy is possessed by a malevolent spirit.  In this case, the dog will run away into the jungle and seek to cause harm to humans.

HD: 4
AC: 2 (17)
Bite: 1d8+2 +poison (save vs. death/ CON save DC 12 or reduced to 0 HP)
Special Abilities: immune to non-magical weapons and normal injury; invisibility (twice a day); change self (once a day - can appear as a human or jaguar, in human guise can communicate in a gruff, barking voice); move silently and pass without trace (at will)

Bororo - Tribe

Bororo Indians of the Amazon

I am currently reading Tristes Tropiques by Claude Levi-Strausse, coming to this book after reading his Mythologiques series, which introduced me to the Bororo.  English language Wikipedia is particularly uninformative on the Bororo, but I found some other websites and even some full text scholarly articles online that filled in some of the gaps from the Levi-Strausse reading.  I have an ongoing Google Document (shared below) that I am using as a research file, dumping links, sources and information into it as I read (I cite the source above the information gathered from that source -  some information  is paraphrased and some is direct quotation from the source material with some deletions/abridgment).  Here is the link: Bororo Research Document 

Quick RPG Takeaways:

The division of each Bororo village into 8 clans, four each in two opposing moieties (Cera and Tugare) makes for ready made inter-village tensions and adventure opportunities.  Despite a traditional hierarchy of the clans, each clan negotiates its own fortunes in each particular village and strives to gain more power in the form of access to new magic and clan roles.  I particularly like how each clan has unique/proprietary decorative ornaments and magical markings to use on weapons and as body paint.  I see each clan pattern bestowing a minor magical property onto the decorated spear, ornament or body (e.g. +1 to AC; +1 to hit and damage; double normal weapon range; +2 to STR; +2 to DEX; +1 attacks/2 rounds; cast a cantrip 3x/day; cast a 1st level spell once/day; etc.).  Bororo believe in reincarnation as part of a complicated transmigration of souls (Bororo souls also pass into animal bodies after death and before returning in reincarnation to a new human body).  Each Bororo shares the name of and is thought to be a partial reincarnation of a dead ancestor.  I think encountering "normal" animals with a Bororo transmigrating spirit could be fun (perhaps human intelligence and one or two minor magical powers for these animals), and then meeting the same spirit reborn into a young Bororo could be good fuel for gaming.

Bororo Encounters:

PCs will either encounter the Bororo out in the jungle/on the river, or at the Bororo village. The Bororo spend more than half their time on average outside of the village.  

Roll 2d6: 2-7: Encountered in Village; 8-12: Outside of Village  (Wet Season add +1 to the encounter roll during the beginning or end of the wet season, add +3 during the peak; during the peak of the wet season bororo spend most of their time on higher ground away from the village)

8-12+ Results: Outside of Village (more common in wet season)

• 7-8: Hunting (more men)
• 9-10: Farming/Gathering (more women and children)
• 11: On the River (more men)
• 12+: Walking through the forest to a faraway destination (equal sexes/ages if visiting friends/relatives, more men if raiding).  

Clans encountered outside the village = one or two of eight unique clans, each clan with its own: proprietary names; tribal roles; magical decorations/signs on weapons and utility tools; magical stories and songs; personal adornments/body paint.  

# Encountered outside the village = 2d6 (6's explode, add +1 clan per 12 encountered, e.g. three clans represented if 13-24 Bororo are encountered outside the village, 4 clans if 25-36 encountered, etc.)

Bororo Village

(The following largely after Levi-Strausse):

A typical village plan:


The village will have at least one hut representing all eight clans, and it is more common to have several huts per clan, representing sub-lineages of the clan.

# Houses per Clan (d6): 1: 1; 2-3:2, 4-5:3, 6:4

# Encountered per House: 2d6 (3d6 during village feast or clan ceremony)

Quick Village Population guide: Large: 300 Average: 150  Small: 100

The village is divided in two by an imaginary line between the Cera moiety to the north and the Tugare moiety to the south. Clan houses form a ring around the men's house in the center of the village. The central plaza is the bororo. Many important rituals are regularly performed in the bororo, especially funerary rites which can continue for months after a death.

The four Cera clans are arranged across the north end of the village circle, from east to west as follows: badegaba cobugiwu (upper chiefs); bokodori (large armadillo); ki (tapir); badegaba cebgiwu (lower chiefs).  

The four Tugare clans are arranged from west to east as follows: iwaguddu (the azure jay); arore (larva); apibore (acuri palm tree); paiwe or paiwoe (howler monkey). 

Moieties and clans are exogamous, matrilineal and matrilocal.  When a man marries he crosses the line separating the two moieties and goes to live in the hut belonging to his wife’s clan.  But in the men’s house he continues to have his place in the sector assigned to his own clan and moiety (his mother’s clan/moiety). The men’s house internal arrangements mirror the village at large - to the north the Cera men and to the south the Tugare.  

Clans are divided into subclans and lineages.  Each clan is ranked and certain positions in the village can only be held by members of particular clans (e.g. Village chiefs must belong to a clan of the Cera moiety).  Each clan has unique emblems, privileges and taboos related to the technique and style of manufactured objects, as well as proprietary ceremonies, songs, proper names and access to medicinal plants (e.g. Tobacco is associated with Bokodori clan, other aromatic plants smoked in a similar fashion include an anonacea controlled by the Paiwe clan).

Men cannot talk to women of the other moiety in public - even husband and wife would not bandy about in public, only being seen together in public when they leave the village to hunt, fish or gather together (which is seen as private).  

 Clothing/Personal Appearance:  Men are usually naked except for penis sheath, but sometimes (and always on festive occasions) wear elaborate ornaments made of fur, multicolored feathers, or bark painted with various designs.  Women wear a slip made from white bark (black when they are unwell) and a high girdle/corset, also made of bark, but dark in color.  Feminine ornaments consist mostly of cotton straps colored with red urucu, and of pendants and necklaces made from jaguar’s fangs or monkey’s teeth, worn only on feast days.

The Rise and Fall of Hakken Aksa-Dak

I died on Monday in my friend Carter's Labyrinth Lord campaign.  Not the usual haul-the-body-out-and-get-raised kind either.  I got the wrong end of the old school Teleport spell and materialized some undisclosed number of feet straight down into solid rock.  I have been thinking about it a little and I don't think there would be any body to speak of or recoverable remains even if an attempt was made to excavate for it.  Just little specks of blood and flesh and bone embedded in solid stone.

In many ways this was a very fitting way for Hakken Aksa-Dak (a.k.a. Dak), the Steve Buscemi of dwarves, to meet his end.  I tried to roleplay Dak's low wisdom (6) and decent intelligence by constantly coming up with risky harebrained schemes and throwing myself into any possible trap head first.

 Way back in Stonehell in our earlier adventures this resulted in Dak being blinded by poison gas from a trap.  Not deterred, I removed the container of poison gas from the trap and used it and the fact that I was already blind as a weapon.  Dak spent several sessions blind in Stonehell; when the party encountered monsters they would point me toward them and I would charge ahead, screaming bloody murder and releasing blinding gas.  It turned out to be a remarkably effective tactic.

More recently the party has been exploring a vampire's lair in the deepest dungeons underneath the free city of Kaladar.  Confronted with a glowing red magical archway, I had my dwarven compatriot Yor (Yor for a better tomorrow!) tie a rope around me and I went through.  I was expecting deadly poison gas at the minimum because I had tried this tactic in an earlier section of this lair when confronted with an archway of glowing green mist and it turned out to be a save vs. death gas (luckily I saved).  Instead what happened is all my gear right down to my beard ring of protection was sucked from my body and I had some hazy sense of a misty cavern that I was being tugged to, and then Yor pulled me back out of the archway (naked).

I did fight an encounter completely naked and wielding a borrowed hand ax that session.

Losing all my gear rankled a bit, but we could not figure out a couple puzzle rooms in the dungeon and were stuck... unless we wanted to go through that damned archway and end up naked on the other side with no gear.

Last session I had the bright idea of bringing a high enough level wizard to have the Teleport spell memorized down to the arch to send him through (naked).  The idea was he would quickly examine the area that the arch led to, trying to mark it for a future Teleport destination, then Teleport out to safety.  We persuaded/conned NPC Tim the Enchanter into this duty; he was eager to make up for the fact that his master in the wizard's council had recently been revealed by the party to be a balrog!  Poor Tim walked through the gate, ended up in a misty cavern, and was attacked by something he didn't see which drained a level before he could Teleport out!

Once back at the wizard's tower Tim and four other high level wizards scried the misty cavern with a crystal ball for an hour until they had a reasonably good lock on it to Teleport the party down there.  There was a 10% chance of a missed destination "Low" result, which basically meant instant death in this situation, and we knew that.  The "High" result wasn't as big of a risk as the misty cavern was quite large; in fact, two party members did arrive 10' in the air and dropped to the ground.  While 10% chance of unraisable death is pretty iffy odds to be putting the whole party through, for once everyone else seemed ready to join in Dak's foolish plan.

 Remarkably, three out of the eight total party members that the wizards Teleported down arrived too low and instantly died.  Dak, Arthurius (follower of Innominus the cleric), and Muckley (dwarf henchman of Dak) all met their ends in this unceremonious manner.  A vampire attacked the remaining party members and was promptly destroyed in one round by Yor (thanks to his nightly d30 roll, his girdle of giant strength and his ancient Noffellian blade Mellion).  The vampire turned out to be a lacky, not the vampire master we had been seeking.

Dak is Dead.  Long live Flipwayter, Dak's trusty follower, who shall pick up the mantle.  Hopefully the party finds the real frickin' vampire and all Dak's old gear so Flipwayter can really keep the name of Dak alive.  In particular, Dak's family heirloom refilling flask of dwarven whiskey will not go unused... as Dak would have wanted.

I am looking forward to next session, a quick turnaround (for us) as we are meeting up again next Monday.  Dak may have died, but his hairbrained scheme did get the party down to the lowest section of the dungeon which we had not been able to access before. As long as we kill the vampire, get the loot and find a way out it will not have been for vain!  If we happen to save Ara from demonic invasion (another story) in the process, so much the better.

Temple of the Dragocroc - Isometric Graphing

All hail Dragocroc!  I hadn't been exposed to isometric graph paper until I saw some Dyson Logos posts that inspired me to check it out.  I found a website with printable isometric graph paper and printed some out.  I present the Temple of the Dragocroc in isometric pseudo-3D view. This started out as doodling without a plan, and as consequence I have gone past the edge of the graph grid in a few places.  I am going to keep working on the original drawing but I also scanned it in and messed around with it a bit in Photoshop just for kicks (Photoshopped scans at bottom of post, unaltered scan of work in progress immediately below).

Work in progress - this is what I have done with pencil, pen and marker so far (no Photoshop)

There is 10' of liquid demonblood flooding the inside of the walled structure. I hinted at the towers and walls extending down past the interior surface area to suggest that it was a liquid surface, but this will be more obvious when I finish up the outer walls and color in the surface of the blood. I am thinking of using colored pencil for the demonblood surface to get some good color swirls going on.  The blood spills out of the mouth of each of the Dragocroc statues down past the tower level immediately below them, landing on the third level up from the bottom, flowing through a channel system to waterfalls that cascade down each face of the tower.

The four Dragocrocs that make up part of the 5th tier of the temples are stone statues inlaid with jade mosaic.  The red eyes are unnaturally large glowing rubies (single rubies each ~10' long, each 1/8 of the heart of the real Dragocroc (powerful demon bound below).  If the ruby eyes are replaced in the heart of the real Dragocroc,  the demon will arise, drink its stolen blood to restore its power and utterly destroy the entire structure and surrounding countryside before embarking on a murderous rampage.) 

The only entrances to the structure are on the fourth and fifth tiers.  Archways open into the tower face on the fourth tier below each Dragocroc mouth.  Each archway leads to a staircase that ascends the inside wall of the tower, giving access to the fifth tier and the walkways on top of the Dragrocroc statues.  Open archways at the base of the tail-spire give access to an empty stone room with a sacrificial alter in the center and an engraved circular trench around its perimeter, the Blood Circle.  The blood of approximately 20 human sacrifices is required to fill the circle.  If the sacrifices are performed under the light of a full moon, the Blood Circle can be used as a powerful summoning and binding focus and a teleportation circle (giving access to the dungeon levels inside the blood-drained and bound Dragocroc demon imprisoned below).  20 ritual spellcasters are required to use the circle for summoning and binding, and 20 sacrifices is the minimum needed for this use.  Every multiple of 20 sacrifices beyond the first 20 increases the power of the circle when used for summoning and binding.  Priests of Dragocroc carry amulets which are linked to the Blood Circle.  Chaotic individuals who hold an Amulet of Dragocroc can sacrifice 1d8 HP of blood to the medallion to teleport without error (including all personal gear and up to two other individuals, unwilling individuals can save to resist) from unlimited range to the circle on the 5th tier.  There is a 1 in 6 chance every time anyone who is not a Priest of Dragocroc picks up an Amulet of Dragocroc that the amulet attacks as an 8HD monster for 1d8 damage and teleports the victim to the circle (save to resist).  

The real Dragocroc is a powerful demon, summoned and bound by a cult which stole its blood to power their magic.  Priests of Dragocroc draw their spellcasting ability from the stolen blood.  They must drink fresh Dragocroc blood once between full moons (at the full moon) or permanently lose all spellcasting ability and go insane (1 in 6 chance of also becoming a were-dragocroc, transforming into a humanoid dragocroc under the light of the full moon, filled with a burning desire to destroy the Priests of Dragocroc).  Any Priest of Dragocroc who suffers this fate will be killed on sight by the priesthood.   Only fresh blood spilling directly out of a Dragocroc statue mouth works, so every full moon every Priest of Dragocroc returns to the temple to drink from the waterfalls.  The potent demon blood provides two extra benefits to the priesthood while powering magic; all damaging spells do an extra 1d8 damage and all undead under the control of a Priest of Dragocroc have +1d8 HP, +1 to initiative and +1 to hit and damage.

Here are two stages of me messing around with this in Photoshop - I don't like the effect and will finish the piece with pen, markers and colored pencil.

Gorilla Art

I recently finished a fun piece of commissioned art, depicting an Experimental Ape from Michael Curtis' upcoming Stonehell 2.  I drew the Ogre Face Arch (the image on the Stonehell tee-shirts) and Coal the Black Bear in the original Stonehell Dungeon, and was very happy to oblige Michael with a new piece.  I never spend any time on artwork unless I have some specific project motivating me, but I always enjoy the hours spent when I do pick up pen and lay it to paper.  I ended up using kind of an unusual technique in this drawing, so I wanted to post about the process here.

I looked over the list of potential illustrations and "Albino Apes with Cybernetic Type Implants" caught my eye.  I introduced bionic chimps and orangutans into my Mutant Future campaign (War Chimps and Warangutans) and they were a big hit with my players.  I have had soft spot for great apes with cybernetic implants ever since. Once I claimed that picture as mine, Michael sent me the following details:

"Experimental apes are double-sized albino gorillas that have two additional arcanitech arms grafted to their bodies below their natural upper limbs. These magical/mechanical arms possess great strength (equal to that of an ogre). These arms also deliver a powerful electrical shock. Any target struck by either of the arcanitech limbs must make a save vs. spells or suffer an additional 1d8 points of damage. Experimental apes are conditioned to be fiercely loyal to the Plated Mage and the Mage-Engineers, and seldom flee from combat. Attempts to charm them rarely succeed and experimental apes gain a +4 bonus to all saving throws against mental domination."

This presented an interesting challenge to me, as the easiest way to depict something as albino is to show it in bright light as mostly white, but I wanted to do a more shadowy drawing since the apes would be encountered underground in a dungeon environment.  I first did a few gorilla studies to get in the mood and shake off any rust from my art muscles.

I wanted to use pen and ink but kept struggling with the fact that I really would need a nice white ink pen and dark paper to draw the image I saw in my head.  Then I hit on the idea of drawing the image with black ink on white paper and reversing it in PhotoShop.  I reversed the larger sketch I had done so far as a quick proof of concept.  Of course the image looks like a negative because the shadowing is in reverse (particularly obvious in the face), but I mostly wanted to see how the fur/hair looked and I liked the effect:

To avoid the appearance of a negative image once I reversed my final piece, I wanted to create a negative image to use as a reference point for my original drawing.  In other words, I would draw a negative image in the first place, so when it was reversed the shading would be correct but all the pen work would be white and the background would be black.  I spent some time collecting various pictures of gorillas, standing gorillas, crouching gorillas, leaping gorillas.  The whole time I was looking for a good reference picture that I could easily insert bionic arms onto, which made the choice a bit more difficult.  I finally settled on an action shot to use as a reference image for the drawing that looks like the gorilla just took a swat at something:

One slight stumbling block was that the left arm of this gorilla was cut off; I could have just winged it, but at this point I had such a large collection of gorilla images that I picked a different image of a different gorilla with its left arm out in a similar fashion and literally just Photoshopped the other gorillas arm over the arm in this picture.  Here is the 2nd gorilla image I used for its left arm:

Next I added a second set of arms by copying the first set of arms, rotating them and moving them down below the armpit.  Then I turned the image into a negative to use as a reference while drawing.  Here is the resulting negative image of a four armed gorilla:

I printed this out, and drawing directly onto the print out, I transformed the lower set of arms into robot arms and added some bionic parts to the torso.  This printout is what I used as a reference while drawing the final image:

My purpose in using a negative reference image while drawing with black ink on white paper was that I would be able to scan and create a negative image of my final drawing; this way the inked fur of the gorilla would be white instead of black.  I hoped this would create the albino effect I was looking for while still allowing me to draw a mostly shadowy, low lit image.  So in other words, I went to some great lengths because I didn't have a good white ink pen and black paper!  My plan was to only reverse the image of the ape itself and leave the robotic arms the way I drew them, since I didn't have a negative reference image for them and also because I thought it would be an easy way to make the metal arms stick out as different from the rest of the ape.  After some work on the drawing I scanned it in to reverse it and see how the process was working - I immediately realized the image I had chosen as a reference image was too shadowed to create an obviously albino ape even if the fur cross-hatching itself was white.  The shadowed areas of the ape were just too dark and made it seem like a normal ape with a bright light shining on some of its fur:

I ended up adding a lot more fur detail than was visible in the original reference image in the chest, stomach and rear leg. I went back in with a pencil in addition to the pen, to lighten up the ape in relation to the background.  Even the most shadowy areas got at least some light pencil fur added.  Several times I called it done, scanned it in and reversed it and decided I still needed to add even more pen and pencil work.  Finally, I decided I had done all I could do and was running the risk of muddying up things if I kept adding more fur.  I added some more pencil shading to the robot arms and scanned it one more time to reverse it and do some more touch up work in Photoshop.  For reference, here is the original (un-reversed) scan of the final drawing and then the reversed image at that point.  I found it very interesting how the entire time I was drawing from the negative image the head just didn't look right, but the second I reversed it, it looked awesome!  My mind had a hard time looking at the original (unreversed) drawing and processing where the eyes were I think.  I just had to trust that I was following an actual negative photo of a gorilla face and as long as I faithfully shadowed where I saw shadow everything would work out okay once I reversed the image.

Original *unreversed* Drawing (pen and pencil)

Negative of the final drawing - before separating the bionic arms out and leaving them unreversed

I carefully went in and selected just the bionic arms to put them in a separate layer of the Photoshop document and leave them un-reversed.  this also allowed me to use a Photoshop effect (Outer Glow) to make it look like the arms were glowing - I was hoping this would evoke the electric shock they could deliver.  I also fixed up the feet and left hand a bit in photoshop since I was unhappy with the way they looked when scanned in (I had made the mistake of drawing an outline around the feet in pen which ended up being a glowing white edge around the toes, and the shading I had done on the left hand I was never happy with).  Finally, I had to figure out what to do about a background.  I didn't really have the time to draw a background (my wife and I recently had our first child, and between working ~55 hours a week and spending as much time with baby Leo as I can, I really don't have any "free" time these days) so I played around with some different things in Photoshop.  I added a gradient to suggest a surface at the bottom, and played around with different ways to crop the image.  I settled on a black circle around the ape, with a slight gradient to gray toward the bottom right, and the ape itself protruding past the background in places to suggest that it was coming out of the page at the viewer.  I know this is kind of cheesy but as soon as I tried it out I really liked the effect it had in this case.  Ultimately I probably didn't save any time versus drawing in a background by hand onto the original drawing and rescanning, because to add the photoshop background I had to carefully carve the entire image out of the black background so it could be on a separate layer from the circle gradient (otherwise I couldn't add the gradient and have the ape look like it was standing on top of it).  This took quite a while as I didn't want it to be a sloppy select job.  I had to go in pixel by pixel in some cases to remove everything except the ink strokes I wanted to keep around the edges.

I have to say though that I am very pleased with the end result - and I can't wait for Stonehell 2 to come out!  Maybe some of you will get to sick one of these bad boys on your players (or meet an untimely demise at their robotic hands if you play on the other side of the DM's screen!).  Final image:

Experimental Ape - Carl Nash 2015 - Pen, Pencil & Photoshop