D20 Fantasy: Garden Of Thorns

The dying woman spoke. Fulan frowned, unable to make it out through the fluid filling her lungs. He rose, wiping his blade on a dead orc's buffcoat. To her credit, the adventurer did not cower as he approached. The warrior squatted in front of her; bare feet protected from the malpais by a quarter-inch of gnarled calluses. The outlander's eyes met his, bloodshot and hateful. She gurgled the word again, loud enough for the entire warband to hear.

"Cannibal". 

Fulan threw his head back and laughed, the cruel sound echoed by the other soldiers who spoke her foreign tongue. He moved to strike her with his cimeter, but she did not flinch. With a grin, he severed her potion bandolier. The warrior scooped up the bottled spells and beheld their contents, ignoring the string of fresh epithets and curses the owner levied at him. 

Mummia from Hogman's Plain. Mellified man from the Hot Lands. Troll's blood from the Peat Bogs. Changeling skin, Umber eyes, Naga fangs, Medusa hair, Minotaur horn. She drank the corpses of thousands, yet cried over his sacred rites. Were these not men? Did they not think, speak, love, and hate?

His eyes flicked to her defiant face, then to the barrels of carmine she'd been transporting. Payment for services rendered, for powder and shot delivered to the hated dogmen. His calloused thumb brushed against his own musket. He was sorely tempted to spark his flinted skin, to watch her face explode into vaporised meat. To leave her ruined corpse to the beak things and bonehounds and ghuls. But it wouldn't be right. She had fought well, nearly punching through his ambush with fire, faith, and steel. 

So he knelt before her and began to cut.

D20 Fantasy: In The Desert

 

The priest gently held the elf's face in his gauntleted hands. Then he began to squeeze. They screamed, face turning wonderful hues of red, white, purple, and blue as their blood vessels exploded. He dug around with his thumbs until they felt wet; vitreous humor soaking the maille as cerulean eyes turned to jelly. The elf gurgled curse after curse, withering body and brain. But Iron Hand girded his flesh and Oil Lamp lit the way. He brought his palms together and their bones broke like a bird's.

...

A stench woke the priest from his dream. Acrid and sharp, it struck his throat with a dull pain he found vaguely pleasurable. He lay on a filthy stone floor, bound with rawhide. Shame flushed his wrinkled face. He'd been paralysed, or charmed, or slept, or laid low by any other myriad of low-level tricks. 

Then he saw his companions and had to choke back a laugh. The fighter snored, drooling into his beard. The thief was trussed up on a spit like a suckling pig, slathered in the eucalyptus oil that must have roused him. Best of all was the wizard, hairless and naked but still held aloft by his spell. Their captors, clearly baffled by the dwarf's persistent levitation, had anchored him to the floor with a length of rope. 

Like the bloated corpse of a stillborn babe, leashed to its mother's womb.

The priest rose, breaking his restraints in one smooth motion. The room was dark and hazy, lit only by the fire beneath the roasting halfling. He made out a vague shape at the edges of his perceptions and surged forwards. Bright red eyes turned to meet his. A flash of recognition played out across the priest's brain. The ochre soil. The shade of the acacia. The crimson orbs staring at him from the sea of grass.

He closed his eyes and the spell harmlessly washed over him. He didn't need to see to kill. The form of the beast was strange, but close enough to a man for his practiced hands. His fingers found purchase in its filthy silk tunic, then dug into greasy flesh. The monsterman brayed like a donkey, releasing hot breath that reeked of eucalyptus. He heard its friends surround him, felt them stab their blades into his back. Through the armour all it did was bruise. The priest breathed in, savouring the moment. He wrapped his hands around its fat head. He felt around with his thumbs.

Then he began to squeeze.

D20 Fantasy: Among The Noisy Heavens

A gang of outback drovers had an arrangement with a local outpost of Mi-Go vivisectionists. They'd offer up the occasional outlaw or captured autochthon for the aliens to chopshop. In exchange, the Million Favoured Ones left them and their sheep alone.

But the bugs appear to have broken the pact. The stockmen's flocks lie dead, decapitated and covered in bizarre burn marks. Strange lights buzz in the skies. Roadwardens investigated the attacks, but only one came back - sans half his skull. He rambled about stars trying to eat him. Then his brains fell out.

To Rule Is My Birthright (GLoG Race-As-Class: Elf)

Gustave Moreau

"And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them. And they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants.

And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells: Who consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind."
Book of Enoch [3:7]

The New Age - Play Report Round-Up 1

I've fallen behind on my New Age play reports. Rather than try to remember precise details and give a blow-by-blow of each sessions, I'll be writing up vignettes of interesting moments. 

This is only half of what I intend to write, but considering this post has been sitting in my drafts folder for over 2 months, I thought I'd at least get something out.

Junji Ito

Unknown Armies Adept: Intravenomancy

 

“When you're sitting back in your rose pink Cadillac

Making bets on your Kentucky Derby days

I'll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon

And another girl to take my pain away”
Rolling Stones

INTRAVENOMANCY

A.K.A. Trackmarkers, Tuskegees, Faucis (Ω + 1)

Are you afraid of needles? You should be. They’re not just an instrument of steel, glass and polymer, but a sacred fetish of scientific progress. A symbol pregnant with magickal power. That which cures the same pestilence it wreaks, that spreads the same agony it wipes away with blissful torpor.

Forget guns. If you’re searching for a postmodern magic wand, look no further than a hypodermic syringe. It commands power no matter who holds it. In the gloved hands of a surgeon it is a sceptre of technocratic paternalism, a divine decree that “doctor knows best”. Yet when possessed by the unwashed masses, it morphs into something else. A terrible thing of contagion and degeneration. An implicit threat of being dragged into that sordid underclass, be it through addiction or disease.

THE FULL BOOT - Play Report

This is a play report of an Unknown Armies shotgun scenario, written by Mellonbread.

The LUMPEN SLEEPERS, a Bostonian occult neighbourhood watch, had gathered for late night drinks in Jenny's dive bar. It was nearly 1:30am, well past final call thanks to unchanged COVID-era closing hours. But they had something important to discuss.

Opera Night

This post is dedicated to Fee Fi Fo Fin's Belli Occulta campaign and the brave Friendlies of Y-Cell, delousing the United Kingdom one parish at a time.

Unknown Armies - Favourite Foods

Based on the series of the same name over on The Rogue's Wallet. I've always loved adding pure filigree to TTRPG characters, and their favourite meals is top of that list. Everyone's gotta eat.

D20 Fantasy - Kill All Druids

A response to Deus Ex Parabola's excellent essay over on Numbers Aren't Real. 

Calder Moore

Ever wonder why nature cultists forbidden from wearing metal go adventuring for fistfuls of gold? It's because of these assholes. The Honourable Guild of Respected Agrimancers. The Druid Mafia.

A cartel of weather wizards, shapeshifters, lay priests and lumpen proles who seek a total stranglehold over agricultural production. Starving entire cities by calling down droughts and flashfloods, installing awakened animal monarchs amicable to their interests, unleashing fungal blights and selling the cure - nothing is beyond the pale for these greenthumbed mafiosos. 

But say you're sick of it. The economic blockades. The price controls. The disappearances late at night. The gangland executions. The government that won't do anything to stop them. What could you do?