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 dishes 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? 

Unknown Armies Pregens

After a few years of skirting the periphery, I've started getting into Unknown Armies. Without an active community for pickup games (the Delta Green fandom is spoiled rotten by N@TO), I'll need to be the one running the show if I want to play. That's fine by me - be the change you want to see in the world.

Unknown Armies Adept: Cadavaturgy

 

“And he meets me in the graveyard, the graveyard where they made my bed, 

Plants a white flower under cold stars, on the grave of the forgotten dead.”

Frank Turner

CADAVATURGY

A.K.A. Resurrectionists, Bodysnatchers, Reliquarians (Ω - 2)

Bodysnatching is an ancient art. We’ve been exhuming people and chopping them into little pieces since the time of Galen, be it for advancing the sciences, stealing funerary goods or venerating the dead. 

Resurrectionists take it a step further, obsessing over cadavers to the point they turn into walking memento mori. Their domain isn’t death itself, but what comes after. The decay of flesh and memories. The person-sized void left in the world. How it changes those who remain.

Unknown Armies Avatar: The Bodyguard

systemflaw

THE BODYGUARD

Attributes
In centuries past the egregore of the protector was a knight in shining armour, shielding a waifish maiden from the forces of evil. Now it’s a man in a dark suit, diving into the path of a bullet. Imagery changes, but the substance stays the same; the Bodyguard sacrifices himself to shield those he's charged to protect. 

Heliomancy Unnatural Phenomena

 

Unknown Armies adept schools sometimes have an associated list of random effects that might fire off if spellcasters overuse or abuse their magickal abilities. Friend of the blog, magnificentophat, is chipping away at making a list of unnatural phenomena for all the published casters. I thought it'd be worthwhile to throw my hat in the ring and assemble such a list for Heliomancy.

Unknown Armies Adept: Heliomancy

“Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity”

Richard III

HELIOMANCY

A.K.A. Sunspotters, Peelers, Backburners (Ω + 1)

There’s something transcendent about the pain of a sunburn. Sure it’s probably the constant irritation, swelling and peeling skin. Or maybe it's the reminder that the sun, the giver of all life on Earth, is also that which bestows burrowing cancer, inflicts droughts and strikes all those who behold it blind.

A CLOSE SHAVE - Grapes Of Wrath Dungeon

William Blake

"A mad king crawling like a hunted beast into a den among the rocks; his tangled golden beard sweeping the ground, his nails like vultures' talons, and his wild eyes full of sullen terror. The powerful frame is losing semblance of humanity and is bestial in its rough growth of hair, reptile in the toad-like markings and spottings of the skin, which takes on unnatural hues of green, blue, and russet."
Alexander Gilchrist (1863)

The New Age - Session 3

October 21st, 1997. North Platte, Nebraska.

The Agents of J-Cell convened in North Platte's FBI field office a few months after the St. Louis incident. With the heat still on them for killing Ronald Valiant, A-Cell had assigned other cells to continue investigating Enolsis. In the interim, the conspiracy had a job for J-Cell. Senior researcher at the Great Plains Cruciform Array (GPCA), Stan Arnold, has been flagged for seeking out a copy of the 10th volume of the Revelations of Gla'aki. Some astronomer looking for a tome wasn't necessarily cause for concern, at least if Arnold hadn't just stabbed his girlfriend to death and committed suicide-by-cop.

A CLOSE SHAVE - Play Report

Sir Edwin Landseer

In the sunny lands of Urth's equator, the potentate of Shamash the Lioneater has descended into anarchy. After a failed campaign against rebel forces, the Nephil's armies of Urmahlullus have been scattered. The god-king himself is rumoured to have been horribly maimed. 

The golden-haired cripple was last spotted on a pilgrimage to his cult's mountaintop temple. There's been no word from him or his cultists since. If there was ever a time to rob a demigod, it's now. Get in and get out before someone beats you to it.