Bestiary VII: Arcanophage

Sketches and observations from the research journal of Lerena DeCarvis - This Arcanophage took possession of my own hat, though it seemed somewhat benign.

 

What follows is an excerpt from the field notes of thaumatological researcher Lerena DeCarvis, a renowned scholar of metamagical phenomena at the school of the Serpentine Gates in Royal Genish.

Is this creature a projection of a much larger, multidimensional entity? Perhaps. Its material form seems to be merely a feeding apparatus which it extrudes into this world to sniff out spells to eat, manifesting its form through common objects. These objects come to life, seemingly with a will of their own, sprouting odd conjugations of anatomy from the nooks and crannies between folds of inanimate matter. They can take any form they wish -- assorted fingers, toes, elbows, the feet of all sorts of creatures -- but must always have something that serves as a mouth to take in sustenance, which is the matter of magic itself. These obligate arcanophages siphon energy from all manner of magical phenomena, including spells, enchantments, even ambient magic, and can live for years on the residue left by large-scale events. They seem, however, especially drawn to active magical practitioners. It is not clear precisely why this should be the case, but my suspicion is that they are attracted to the more concentrated weaving of magic that occurs when sentient creatures manipulate the ebb and flow of magic in their vicinity. This must be a more substantial source of sustenance for these creatures to feed on.

But what prompts me to conclude that this phenomenon is part of a larger whole, rather than a creature in its own right? The magic it eats must go somewhere, and it seems to almost disappear, which suggests to me that this creature has some kind of storage or digestion that does not exist on this plane. I must consult with a colleague who specialises in interplanar phenomena in order to get to the bottom of this. 

I spoke with a local mage the day before yesterday in my search for one of these creatures. He was a hedge-wizard and local herbalist. When I broached the topic of these little-known manifestations, he grimaced and told me they were the reason he kept his spellbooks in a safe made of solid iron.

"There's one around here," he said, "that will sip the spells right from my head. Can't be too careful. I imagine it's only a matter of time before it sniffs out my spellbooks and licks the ink clean off the pages!"

 I once saw a particularly animated Arcanophage take possession of a household rug.

Hitpoints and stats: It doesn't really have a 'body'. It isn't really a 'creature' as such. The Arcanophage has as much durability as the object it currently inhabits. If that object breaks, the Arcanophage either moves to a nearby object it has previously inhabited or, if there are none, it disappears into whatever strange dimensional pocket it came from. However, it may find its way back to its feeding ground and return in 1d4 days.

For movement, its manifested feet or tentacles or fingers or other forms of appendage allow it to move normally, but not to fly (unless you think that would be fun). For ability scores, assume this feeding apparatus is a smaller part of a much larger (and more dangerous) whole. It has no need to attack physically. All it wants is to search for magic to siphon. When grappling or making Dex saves, Wis saves, etc., assume it has no bonuses. However, the Arcanophage is immune to mind-affecting abilities and spells. It is not an independent being in itself, more just a mouth for something else.

From rare encounters with these creatures, researchers have documented a number of behaviours:

Stored Magic: As the creature consumes magic, it becomes more powerful. Each level of spell it eats adds to an integer that represents this power. Call this number its Stored Magic. At the start of an encounter with one of these creatures, the GM should roll 2d6. This number represents the total spell levels that the Arcanophage currently holds. This number will fluctuate depending on what the creature does, but keep track of it in any case.

note: The Arcanophage's appetite is not infinite. If, during an encounter, the creature's Stored Magic ends up being double its starting value, it will use its Extradimensional Traveller ability to disappear, returning in 1d4 days with a fresh appetite. Don't maintain the creature's Stored Magic from a previous encounter. Just roll the 2d6 again at the start. (You can also increase or reduce this die roll as you see fit -- 2d4 for an easier encounter, 2d8 for a more difficult one, etc.) 

Arcane Battery: As a reaction, the Arcanophage can use a spell-like ability similar to Counterspell. If the Arcanophage's Stored Magic is equal to or greater than the level of the spell being cast, the caster of the spell should make a Wisdom save (DC15 or something equivalent if you're not playing D&D). If the caster fails, the Arcanophage can negate the spell in the same way as Counterspell. After that, whether it is successful or not, reduce the creature's Stored Magic by the spell's level.

note: The Arcanophage will not attempt to counter cantrips, but will use these to assess which character might be best to feed on. 

This teapot was deemed not safe for use after an Arcanophage used it to siphon a 'Time Stop' spell from the Archmage Torren Ardexos.

 

Spell Eater: The Arcanophage is drawn to patterns of magic, to the crux of potentiality that these knots invoke. In other words, spells. The Arcanophage can attempt to grapple, and if successful, will siphon magic from the mind of the grappled creature. After a successful grapple, determine one of the grappled subject's prepared spells at random. If the subject fails a Wisdom save (DC15), that spell becomes unprepared, and the Arcanophage adds that spell's level to its Stored Magic. 

If the Arcanophage is able to access a spellbook of any kind (unattended by its owner), this ability will erase one random spell per hour of uninterrupted access from that spellbook permanently, no save required. 

note: The Arcanophage will prioritise creatures who have prepared spells from their spell list (it can smell them), i.e. a wizard. If there are none, the Arcanophage will go for Sorcerers and Warlocks etc., and instead of un-preparing the spell, it will make that spell uncastable until the character's next short rest.  

Enchantment Sapper: If the Arcanophage comes within melee range of any enchanted item, it can attempt to temporarily drain and suppress the item's power as an action. The Arcanophage forces the item's bearer to make a Wisdom save (DC15), and if it fails, that item becomes unenchanted for 1d4 rounds. If an enchanted item in range does not have a bearer (i.e. is unattended), the ability works without a required save. If successful, increase the Arcanophage's Stored Magic by the number of rounds (the previous 1d4).

Once a spellbook is wiped clean of magic, an Arcanophage considers it a useful abode.

Extradimensional Traveller: An Arcanophage exists temporarily inside a human-made, inanimate, unenchanted object of Small or Tiny size (a bucket, a coat, a hat, a teapot, a jewellery box). As an action, it can disappear from the object it currently inhabits and emerge from another one within sight similar to the spell Misty Step. However, it may not take objects or creatures with it, and the target of the spell must be a Small or Tiny inanimate, unenchanted object. The Arcanophage can also simply choose not to reappear, effectively retreating back to whatever planar reality it originally came from. Once an Arcanophage has inhabited a given object, it makes a connection with that object. Previous use of an object makes it easier and more likely for the creature to return to that object in the future, allowing it to move to and from it regardless of its current location (including other planes of existence).

note: Detect Magic can identify objects that an Arcanophage has previously inhabited, but a good sniff can do likewise (such as a DC 20 Perception or Arcana check). If such an object is broken, smashed, shattered, or otherwise ruined, it cannot return to it. 

I am not sure what this Arcanophage hoped to achieve by inhabiting this cooking pot. Perhaps it hoped mages would pour spells directly inside, as though it were a witche's cauldron?

 

In other times, in wiser places, wizards have been known to use these creatures as familiars. Their ability to consume magic can be a great boon to casters who need protection from hostile forces, and shrewd mages can strengthen them by feeding the creature spells directly from their minds. 

Perhaps it is possible to reverse the flow of magic into these creatures, too. It stands to reason that, if a creature eats something, it can also regurgitate that something. Perhaps Arcanophages are also allergic to some schools of magic  or damage types (necromancy for example, or necrotic damage), and prefer to eat more palatable spells (evocation, transmutation, radiant damage). Also, eating magic from the shadow realm, corrupted magic, or maybe even wild magic might cause the creature to throw everything it has eaten recently back up again. How that looks, though, and what kind of arcane nonsense occurs in the aftermath as it burps and belches partially digested magic back into the world, could be anything: random spells firing around, spontaneous magical effects, environmental changes, even the characters themselves changing in some cosmetic way, or strange temporal disturbances. Be creative. It's entirely up to you.

 

In any case, I hope you've found this post interesting or inspiring. As usual, you can use any of these ideas however you want. Change them, adapt them to suit. I'd love to hear if you do. Let me know what you come up with.

Peace,

O 

Why NPC Motivations Matter

 

Now you are cursed with knowledge, as I am. She sees you. She looks into your very soul.

I'm going to deliver the promise of this article right here, right now. NPC motivations matter because...

If you know why someone does something, you know much more about them than just their outward behaviour. You know how they would view the players, how they would interact with the players, you know what their values are, and how to leverage those values to create memorable companions and unforgettable villains.

This article is all about exploring the why.

 If you know a character's reasons for doing something, you know how they might change if they get what they want, or if they don't. If you plan on keeping a recurring NPC around for a while, this could be really valuable for you.

 

Alignment And Epistemology Part 2, The Eight-Year Boogaloo

If you know, you know.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about people recently. It's made me realise that I don't really understand them at all. I'm not a natural empath. It's okay, I've made peace with it. I'm trying to improve in that respect, but I struggle to genuinely put myself in the shoes of another person and think of things from their psychological perspective. Sure, I can imagine what I'd do in a situation, how something might make me feel, but I'm always too influenced by my own biases and ways of thinking to imagine how another person might process thought and arrive at a different conclusion to me. I mean, perhaps that's pretty normal and there's nothing particularly strange about it, but I worry that it makes me some kind of alien who can't relate to humans very well.

 To solve this issue, instead of doing years of deep introspection and psychological work, I can just rely on a framework of personality that someone else came up with that will help me to explain why other people do the weird things that they do.

 I wrote a bit a long time ago about alignment in D&D and how it wasn't a great system for representing interesting, nuanced characters. (I called that piece part 1, so I guess this is part 2, nearly 8 years later.) Alignment can work, but it doesn't do much for motivation, only for outward personality. Traditional alignment is more about the what than the why of an NPC's actions, and these days I'd argue that knowing the reason is more important. If you want interesting NPCs, knowing why they act is more useful than knowing specifically what they would do in a given scenario. Like, if you ask a Lawful Good character why they did something, they'd probably say 'because it's right' whereas a Chaotic Good character would do something different in the same situation and still claim 'it's right.' There's no difference in why these characters act, only in what they do.

 If you want your NPCs to be amusing side-characters whom the players see just for a minute or two and then they're gone forever then that's fine too. You don't need to go into this much depth or detail about a toothless beggar or armless goblin merchant. Caricatures are great in the right places, but knowing and understanding a character's core motivations gives a GM a more interesting route to fleshing out their personalities in the first place, especially if they're going to play a more long-term role in the game.

 Not only does knowing a character's core motivation give you ideas about how they'd act, but it also suggests what they wouldn't do, what they might approve of, disapprove of, how they'd go about reaching their goals, and (most importantly) how they'd interact with the players. This can be useful for all kinds of NPCs, from the local village idiot to the gods themselves, including your major antagonists along the way. Plus I really like all that Jungian stuff.

That Jungian Stuff

 An idea that's been doing the rounds on YouTube recently is the Enneagram model of personality. Now, I think a lot of this is unreliable and overly prescriptive as a framework for understanding the complexities of real people, but as LocalScriptMan suggests, this kind of pseudoscience can be pretty useful to writers as models for character development and motivation. His main line is that the Enneagram is useful in writing good characters for stories and screenplays, but I think we can say the same for NPCs in a roleplaying game. They're just people, after all. That's the basis of what I'll be talking about from here.

 At its very most basic level, the Enneagram functions as a model for telling us about our most basal motivations and fears, and a lot of it is just an extrapolation of those fears. But honestly, that's exactly what we're after. When writing characters, this is a really good thing because it helps us to really maintain a through-line by which we understand them. It keeps them consistent.

 Not only that, but the Enneagram suggests quite comprehensively what characters do when they're emotionally healthy, and what they do when their fears get the better of them and they slide into unhealthy patterns of behaviour. You want heroes? Great, use this. You want villains? Great, use this.

The 9 Types 

If you've got time on your hands, you could go and find a book on the Enneagram, or read up online about the basics of each type. You don't need to go into loads of detail learning about a type's wings, their disintegration, or integration with other types unless you want to. Just the basic motivations are enough for our purposes, peppered with a little bit of healthy/unhealthy behaviours.

 

There are plenty of resources out there, but for expediency I'll list the nine types and their basic motivations/fears down below. I'm not an expert so I've copied them from enneagramexplained.com. I've included each type's fears too, but they're basically an inversion of their desires, so there's nothing stupendously enlightening there. Desire is their motivation, and the lack of that exact same desire is their fear. It feels pretty binary and simplistic, but if you think about it, these two things are in fact the same thing. Having/being the thing and not having/being the thing are just two sides of the same coin.

Type 1 Core Desire: Being Good / Being Right
1s want to be right, good, correct, responsible, appropriate, accurate, virtuous, and ethical. They fear being bad, wrong, unethical, immoral, incorrect, inappropriate, and evil.

Type 2 Core Desire: Being Wanted / Being Loved
2s want to be loved, wanted, needed, appreciated, and seen as kind and helpful people. They fear being unloved, unwanted, not needed, not appreciated, and needy.

Type 3 Core Desire: Being Valuable / Being Admired
3s want to be valuable, successful, admired, respected, and praised. They fear being worthless, a failure, not valued, not admired, not successful, and inefficient.

Type 4 Core Desire: Being Authentic / To Find Meaning
4s want to be authentic, uniquely themselves, special, to find their own specific place in this world, to find meaning. They fear being without significance, having no identity, being common, being defective, or flawed.

Type 5 Core Desire: Being Competent / Being Capable
5s want to be competent, capable, knowledgeable, self-sufficient, and well-informed. They fear being incompetent, incapable, unknowledgeable, helpless, ignorant, and invaded.

Type 6 Core Desire: Being Secure / Being Supported
6s want to be secure, safe, protected, have guidance, have support, and reliability. They fear being without support, without guidance, without security, being alone, and being abandoned.

Type 7 Core Desire: Being Satisfied / Being Content
7s want to be satisfied, content, happy, unrestrained, and free. They fear being deprived, trapped in emotional pain, being bored, and limited.

Type 8 Core Desire: Being Independent/ To Protect Themselves
8s want to be self-governed, independent, and they want to be able to protect themselves (and those they care about). They fear being controlled, harmed, powerless, weak, vulnerable, and manipulated.

Type 9 Core Desire: Being at Peace / Being Harmonious
9s want to be at peace, harmonious, connected, untroubled, at ease. They fear being separated, being at a loss with others, conflict, tension, being shut out, and overlooked.

Notice that although most sources tend to give the types their own title to aid in comprehension, I've not done that. This is partly because I don't think the types hold much of use outside their basic motivations, and extrapolating too far from these creates unnecessary stereotypes, as I explain at the end. 

 

Healthy And Unhealthy Behaviours

 Each type in the Enneagram has a detailed progression through 9 different states, ranging from most healthy (1-3), to average (4-6), to unhealthy (7-9). Now, I think these get a bit extreme down at the very unhealthy end, with the descriptions start talking about depression, psychosis, mania, all kinds of mental health talking points that I'm not qualified to delve into. On the upper end, there's a certain amount of self-helpy-woo-woo language about the Enneagram, but the general message is pretty solid. In the more middling ranges, we get some really interesting examples of how the types' desires feed into their decisions.

 For example, a 5's desire for competence and knowledge might compel them to research a topic deeply before getting involved. This could mean that 5s have a wealth of theoretical skills when they apply themselves to something. However, the same instinct can hold them back if they go too far into it, and no matter how much they find out, they may never feel ready to take that initial plunge for fear of getting something wrong. They hesitate, retreat into their own minds, and withdraw from the world. But it still all comes down to why. The 5 researches because they want to be seen as competent, as being 'good at' something or being 'right.' They hesitate because they don't want people to think they're incompetent or bad. Small conceptual problems balloon into insurmountable obstacles. 

 On the surface, the 5's motivations seem similar to a 3, but they're not the same. You might think a 3 would want to undertake something for a similar reason (being recognised as the best or receiving praise and accolades isn't so far from people thinking you're skilled or competent), but on the negative side of the spectrum, these desires play out differently. A 5 desires skill and mastery for its own sake, whereas a 3 wants skill to win, to beat other people. While an unhealthy 5 might withdraw and study intensely in order to prepare for something, an unhealthy 3 might attempt to deceive others or even cheat to get what they're after.

 After a bit of reading, I think what it comes down to is that, when a type is healthy, they can look beyond the need to acquire the thing they want, and use their acquired methods and skills to benefit themselves and those around them. When a type is average, they're trying their best to acquire what they need, and sometimes their fears get in the way of that, or they fail to see how their actions affect others. And when a type is unhealthy, they pursue their need and insulate themselves against their fears regardless of the impact their actions have on others or themselves; they lash out, they withdraw, they delude themselves, and so on. 

 Crucially, the types can move between these states when things get better or worse for them, giving your NPCs believable arcs in terms of how they relate to the characters. Do the PCs help out an NPC with something they need? Great, you can make them a more healthy version of themselves. Do the PCs hinder or oppose the NPC in some way? Make them act in a more unhealthy way to simulate their descent into villainy!

 I was going to write some examples of NPCs as proof of concept, but I think I'll leave that for another post in the future. This one is already long enough.

Problems

 It's not a perfect model. One thing a lot of Enneagram sources do is to apply particular stereotypes over the top of the basic fears and motivations. This is kind of unhelpful because it narrows the envelope for each type and makes them less widely applicable. For example, positioning type 4 as the 'artist' implies that all 4s are artistic, other types aren't, and that all artists are type 4. The same goes for type 5s and the 'scientist' label, or type 8s and being the 'leader.' 

 In some ways it does seem to fit intuitively that certain types might gravitate towards particular jobs, interests, or roles, but it's not useful when we're trying to distil a character to their most basic function. We're using this to find the 'why' rather than the 'what' of a character's actions. An artist can be motivated to do art by the desire for recognition and fame (being the best, type 3) just as easily as they can by the need for self expression (type 4) or to demonstrate mastery of a particular medium (type 5). Some might even just want to try making art because their friends are into it (type 6) or they're curious and fancy a new hobby (type 7). In my (limited and relatively uninformed) opinion, the Enneagram has nothing to do with whether a person is actually good at something, and everything to do with why they might decide to try it in the first place.

 Lastly, this model is great as an emergent way of creating interesting characters, but reverse-engineering it is a little more difficult. For example if you want to create an NPC to do a specific thing or to exist for the players as a particular kind of character (like, I really want this character to get in their way and prevent them from achieving their goal through, like, a meddlesome bureaucracy or something) then you might have a bit more legwork to do in terms of figuring out that character's motivations. It can be done, but it's harder to justify or reconcile everything in reverse. 

 This has implications for railroading adventures versus letting them unfold naturally as you and your players discover it. Not that railroading is always bad, but retroactively applying this model to a story that exists or that you want to exist is harder than letting the story unfold through the interactions of NPCs with the player characters.

 If anyone has used this model in the past to create interesting NPCs, or even their own player characters, write it down in the comments below. I'd be fascinated to hear how this model has helped bring more interesting characters to the table. Or perhaps you disagree completely with my opinions; in which case, come and discuss it!

Peace

p.s. The Lisa Simpson thing was a weird way to introduce the article because she has nothing to do with creating interesting NPCs, but I'm convinced of a Lisa Simpson/Enneagram conspiracy. As a type 1, Lisa attempts to right the world's wrongs and align everything with her idealistic morals whilst maintaining her self-image as an upstanding and righteous person. I'd argue that the Enneagram itself is another type 1's attempt to do the same. Is there a link between the Enneagram and Lisa Simpson's visual design? I doubt we'll ever know for sure, but there could be.

 

Bibliography

Riso, D.R. and Hudson, R., 1996. Personality types: Using the Enneagram for self-discovery. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Link on Google Books.

How Many Words do They Have for the Dark?

https://cosmosmagazine.com/archaeology/neanderthals-live-us/ - The relationship between H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens is much closer than a lot of people think.

 

Dwarves live underground. Yeah that's cool, but why?

Dwarves are shorter and more beardy than humans. Yeah sure, but why?

Dwarven craftspeople are renowned for their meticulous work. Yeah, but why?!

Dwarves are resistant to poison. Yeah cool but please tell me WHYYYY!!

The people of the dark, our mysterious and taciturn cousins, the Khuzd, as Tolkien termed them. Dwarves, as deemed by the common tongue, come from a world unlike our own. A world of cold and darkness, of shifting shadows and inhospitable crags. In this post I'm going to talk about various anthropological ideas and how we could use them to think about the different races of D&D- in this case, Dwarves. The theories and ideas I'll be touching upon come from human evolution and our close relatives the Neanderthals, the Kula from Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific, The Gift by Marcel Mauss, and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic and cognitive interrelation.

The Biological

I was first interested in expounding on the history of the Dwarves after reading about how similar they could be to our cousins in the real world- the Neanderthals. With a background in human evolution, it makes perfect sense to me. Neanderthals evolved in the relative cold and dark of ice-age Europe after a migration of an earlier species of Homo found themselves isolated from African and Asian populations by glaciation and a cooler climate. The Europe of half-a-million years ago was, relative to the vast open plains of Africa and the dense hot jungles of Asia, a gloomy and frigid place. Let's move further into the realm of D&D to have a look at the rules which apply to the race, and what this might say about their evolutionary heritage.

 

Dwarves get a constitution bonus of +2. This implies they are tough and robust. From the fossil evidence, we know that the average Neanderthal's body plan is stout and broad, with shorter limbs than their more gracile cousins- perfectly suited to a cold environment. Creatures which are adapted to the cold are often shorter and stockier, with a greater mass to surface area ratio than their warm climate relatives (see Bergmann's and Allen's rules). Not only this, but their Dwarven Resilience rule suggests that they are adapted to an environment of dietary scarcity or scavenging behaviour akin to vultures. It might also suggest that they had to resort to eating poisonous plants or fungi as a fallback food. Fallback foods are what a species relies upon when their preferred diet is unavailable, generally thought as a more effective driver of digestive and masticatory (chewing) anatomy than a species's preferred food source- if you can't survive in times of scarcity, you won't make it to when the good food comes back.

 

The article I referenced above also talks about some of the Neanderthals' other anatomical features, such as a wider nasal cavity (for greater heat retention and warming of the cold air being inhaled through the nose) and larger eye sockets (for better vision in Europe's darker climate). If you haven't read it yet, you should give it a look, it's pretty cool. 

 

Their darkvision ability is a little harder to rationalise, being a somewhat supernatural ability which lets a creature see in total darkness rather than just low-light conditions, but what it suggests to me is that perhaps Dwarves (and other races which can see in the dark- goblins, elves, etc.) possess something like a Tapetum Lucidum- a layer of reflective tissue at the back of the eye which allows the retinal cells to collect more light and thus see more clearly in darkened conditions. It's responsible for that 'eyeshine' effect so often seen when you shine a torch at a cat in the dark, or take its photo. Although absent in primates (that's why nocturnal species like tarsiers have such massive 

eyes instead), given that this anatomical feature is a common mammalian adaptation, there's no reason it couldn't make an appearance in a fantasy setting. Also the idea of Dwarves' eyes catching the light from glowing embers at the edge of the party's campsite is pretty cool. In any case, this adaptation often suggests a nocturnal activity pattern, but for our purposes, it could just as readily suggest a semi-subterranean one.

From the evidence, we might see a pattern emerging which suggests an evolutionary environment of extremely harsh winters- arctic even- combined with the existence of safe havens in the form of massive, sprawling caves and caverns complete with poisonous fungi. Perhaps to cope with the biting cold of winter, this species used underground habitats as shelter. To adapt to the scarcity of this environment, acquisition of poison resistance and a tapetum lucidum allowed them to survive until temperatures above ground increased, even if only marginally. Populations would probably return to the same underground havens year after year, using them as places to live, to raise young, and bury their dead.

We can also see from numerous sources of evidence that Neanderthals weren't the thoughtless primitives that we used to imagine- the mythical 'cave man.' They could engage in complex symbolic thought, created art, and were probably able to use linguistic expression in the same way as humans. In fact we are so similar that there are a number of anthropologists who even consider them the same species as H. sapiens, owing to the evidence that neanderthal DNA is found in human populations to this day. Allegedly, this interbreeding between populations is where we get the gene for red hair, straight hair, increased body hair, red cheeks, and even freckles. Much literature on the topic is still emerging and it's an exciting time for paleoanthropologists and geneticists alike.

The ... Social?

I'm inserting this subtitle because it's a moiety I feel comfortable with, but in reality it isn't as simple as that. There's a gradual segue between the biological and social sides of anthropology. Or in this case ... Dwarthropology?

As you might be imagining, we see an interesting evolutionary context forming. This can function as the basis for an emergent Dwarfish culture. Over time, populations return again and again to these previously mentioned underground winter havens, and they begin to venerate them as sacred places. They regard them as an ancestral home, and those who preceded them have been interred there over the generations. Perhaps contemporary populations imagine or believe they are being watched over by their ancestors, or that these havens are to be guarded- defended from interlopers and strangers. Their subterranean home is both a place to seek sanctuary and a place to be staunchly defended.

Sociality and Survival

 

 During the winter months, these settlements are isolated almost entirely from the rest of the world. No trade happens, no communication. And I would imagine also that because of the fantastic nature of this world, perils from below are just as present as perils from above. Goblins and other snarling, creeping creatures of the deep dark provide a lurking terror for the Dwarves who venture further below. We might also imagine the kind of society which would exist in a place like this. Existing in close proximity for a number of months at a time might require strict rules and codes of conduct for maintaining social order. A tight-knit community which values social cohesion and working together would stand a better chance than one stricken with internecine squabbles- this reflects the D&D rulebook's suggestion that Dwarves favour a lawful alignment. The laws of the hearth, house, and home are sacrosanct, handed down from antiquity.

 

 

 Voyages of Exchange- The Gift and the Argonauts of the frozen north

Two landmark texts of social anthropology, The Gift by Marcel Mauss and Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Bronislaw Malinowski, have an interesting parallel here. Without going into too much detail about the academic side of it, these treatise talk  about economies of gift exchange in paticular societies. One of these happens to be a loose collection of tribes in a place known as the Trobriand islands in Papua New Guinea. These isolated communities take to the seas and sail vast distances, risking their lives to partake in the exchange of trinkets and other goods. The system is known as the Kula ring, and pieces of jewellery make their way in a circuit around the islands, exchanging hands, and linking the gift giver and receiver inextricably, some say for life. The interesting thing here is that this mechanism of exchange, this ritualised gifting, serves to tie loose tribes together and create bonds which foster migration and economic activity between the two, whilst also elevating the status of the one who undertakes the journey within their own tribe.

We might say for our purposes that this Kula exchange appears in Dwarven society too. During the brief summer months, when conditions above ground allow it, a frenzy of activity takes place between previously isolated tribes. They come together, hosting those who travel over the forbidding mountain ranges and through the glacial valleys to give lavish gifts. Perhaps there is a long and deep tradition of hospitality amongst  these peoples. And that these trinkets, the symbolic tokens which mark someone as an experienced traveller, grow in number the more journeys one undertakes. Older members of a tribe might have dozens of bangles, necklaces, beard rings, or some other kind of hand-crafted jewellery inscribed with the names of those who held it before. Perhaps they could even carry good luck wishes for the ones who carry it in the future.

 

Hand-crafted jewellry from the Trobriand islands, similar to that used in the Kula ring written about by Malinowski.

How many words do they have for the dark?

When I studied a bit of social Anthropology at undergrad, I spent a couple of terms thinking about culture, cognition, and linguistics. This corner of a much larger course focused primarily on the difficulty of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or, more accessibly, the idea that a person's or a people's language changes the way they think about the world.

This is best illustrated by the old story that Inuits have about fifty words for snow or something like that. Everyone's heard that one, and the explanation is fairly reasonable. People are unsure generally whether this is a myth or not, but it seems like there is at least a grain of truth to it. Because Inuit cultures and languages developed in a cold place with lots of snow, they recognised that there were different kinds of snow and as such their language developed ways of describing them accordingly. It isn't so much that they have many different words for the same thing- I'm not simply talking about a kind of linguistic redundancy- more like they have intricate ways of describing subtle variations in a common phenomenon.

 

A more contemporary version of this might be the many, many different names we have for a nice cup of coffee. Americano, latte, cappuccino, long black, flat white, macchiato, espresso, filter, cortado, etc etc... You get the idea. The variety of language we have for different types of coffee helps us to appreciate the differences between them, and think about the topic in more depth. I'd like to point out my use of the word 'helps' here- we can still think about things without the language to facilitate it, albeit more nebulously. The vocabulary helps us to clarify our thoughts, but lack of language doesn't stop us being able to think something which we can't quite articulate. When I was working in cafes, I would get a little exasperated when people would come up to the counter and ask for "just a normal coffee." There's nothing ab-normal about all these different types of drink, the patron simply lacked the knowledge to discern between them, and regarded them all as a confusing mess. This isn't a condemnation, it's just a meeting of two different schema, two alternate maps of understanding.

To bring it back to the world of fantay, the thing which Dwarves unoubtedly spend their time immersed in is a dark enviroment. They could have dozens of ways to describe different kinds of darkness. Subtle variations in tone, perhaps even varying degrees of near-darkness and colour of light. Accompanying sounds, temperature, moisture level, percieved danger, emotional state of the perciever, smell- these could all contribute to a deep and rich vocabulary which comes from an a appreciation for all things unlit. Simply saying somewhere is "dark" when a Dwarf is in earshot might prompt bafflement or derision. Something like "What do you mean?" To which an uncultured human might reply, "You know, just normal dark. Like, when you can't see anything." The philistine.

Let's end things with a little imaginative delve into types of dark- a literal translation of the Dwarven word, followed by a slightly more detailed description.

Stone-pressing: This word describes the kind of dark where you know you are surrounded on all siddes by impenetrable walls of solid, metamorphic rock. Stones which have been still since the beginning of time, pressed and crushed into a form so strong and dense that nothing in existence can move them. There is no sound except your own breathing, the beating of your own heart, blood rushing through your ears. There is no movement of air, it is just closeness, stillness. A kind of peace. In the language of the Dwarves it sounds almost like the word for home.

Young-billow: The feeling of cold seeping into the ends of your toes and fingers, the tip of your nose. Cold, fresh air moving slowly through enormous space, but not being in the space itself. The air carries with it the feeling of immensity, and the darkness resonates with the orchestral echoes of frozen dust and cave clouds whispering as they wash over themselves. Many Dwarves say this darkness makes them feel invigorated, like a human might if they went walking on a crisp winter morning.

Rising-scalp-warmth: In the dark, when you can hear the dripping of a single water droplet, incessantly and unceasingly. Often when you are trying to sleep.

Beard-curl: When you can smell green things growing around you and the air is cool and wet with the breath of plants and mould and mushrooms. When there is soft earth beneath your feet and moss between your toes. You can almost see the stuff of the darkness itself swirling around you like a chilly soup. Tiny droplets of water spinning in a ballet.

Wall-mouthing: The feeling of hearing a living creature moving or talking far away. Distant echoes from uncertain directions. The sound reverberates through the darkness, and the direction feels fuzzy. This can be a comforting feeling, or a confusing and terrifying one.

Neck-cloth: In the silence when you hear a quiet shuffle of somethig moving nearby when you previously though there was nothing there. It is darkness enflamed with intense and sudden fear. A feeling which makes you want to dissipate into mist.

Far-shaping: When you are walking and in the distance you catch a glint of something- a glowing fungi, the shine of the water's surface, the sheen of precious metal, and your own movement allows you for a split second to see the full hugeness of the space you are moving in. A sense of visual depth or distance in a world where depth is otherwise defined by sound, touch, or smell.

Grey-rub: When you know that, however slowly, the rocks around you are moving. You can feel time pushing with immense weight and the rocks around you begin to feel almost like liquid. Perhaps you can hear them creak, crack, and groan as you sit in silence, or wander through deserted tunnels through the heart of the earth itself. Perhaps you can hear rivers of clear water flowing in forgotten places. It is a spiritual feeling. A connectedness.

I'm sure there are many more. I don't think my clumsy descriptions and literal translations have quite done justice to the subtle poetry that are Dwarven words for the dark.

Rime of the Frostmaiden: Cold-Hearted Killer Part 1

I made an old-school map for the game, inspired by those old classics like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale itself. If you look closely you'll see it's total crap, so don't look closely. If you want a high-res copy of the image, you can find it here.

 Over the past months, I've been thinking about how I might run Rime of the Frost Maiden. I bought a copy of TT Foundry, and it's pretty good. I'm not all that interested in the functionality of having the rules tied into the code of the platform, or in having it function as a kind of war game, but I like the potential to create an immersive atmosphere and combine images with music and whatnot all on the same screen. The software's ability to overlay weather (like snow), text, and dynamic lighting really make the maps seem alive, which I enjoy.

I'm also a massive fan of The Alexandrian, specifically the articles which go into great detail fixing the Descent into Avernus campaign. I read the official supplement and felt very underwhelmed by it, and I think Justin Alexander has done a great job bringing justice to what could be a great story, but which WotC left somewhat flat and riddled with inconsistencies. Elsewhere on his site, he talks at length about mystery adventures and node-based scenario design, and I thought I'd try my hand at adapting RotFM to just such a structure. By the way, if you have the time and want to delve into these Alexandrian.net links, I would definitely recommend it, they're great.

I also discovered ArtBreeder, and AI tool which allowed me to create NPC portraits and landscape backdrops with relative ease, some of which I've scattered through this article to give you an idea of what it can do. It's a lot of fun.

Lastly, I've been listening to Jeremy Soule's The Northerner Diaries, which fits perfectly.

Artbreeder uses AI to generate images of landscapes

Cold-Hearted Killer

and portraits too- this is Kaltro

Spoilers below. If you don't want to know the plot, read no further! If you're a compulsive self-spoiler like I am, read on.

Much like my reaction to Avernus, I was excited by the premise of RotFM but the initial quest seemed quite low effort. Hlin Trollbane walks up to the players and says 'here's a guy I want you to kill. I don't have any evidence to substantiate my request, but go and find him anyway.' That strikes me as pretty lazy. From the way I read it, this initial quest is supposed to draw players into the world of Ten Towns, encouraging them to visit the settlements in turn while searching for this man. However, it isn't very well structured, and there isn't anything more than 'is Sephek in this town? Roll a die and find out,' which could lead to a very frustrating sequence of walking from town to town without finding anything at all. There are other quests along they way, but if they don't make progress on this initial quest, by the time they find the guy they might not even remember or care why they were asked to find him in the first place.

So, how can we fix this? I would like to turn to The Alexandrian's explanation of node-based scenario design and try to flesh out this lacklustre quest. If you haven't read  the articles, or aren't already familiar with the idea, here it is. It's quite simple: At the start of the adventure, players are presented with a number of clues which point to certain people, places, events, activities, and so on. These form the nodes of the adventure, and each one holds a number of clues which point to other nodes. This structure works well for mystery-type quests where the ending is not known, and some thinking, investigation, and decision-making has to happen along the way. Gathering clues will lead players to investigate further nodes until they can solve the mystery and follow the quest to its conclusion. Nodes are arranged into tiers, which give players a sense of progression through a story. Eventually the tier one node clues stop showing up, new clues appear, and they are led further into the mystery.

(Lastly, I would like to quickly touch upon the idea of how much the players know at the start of the campaign. Yes, Icewind Dale has been plunged into a year-long Winter, but does anyone know why? Instead of just saying 'it was Auril, she did it and we need to stop her,' perhaps it would be more interesting if no one knew why. One night, the skies were filled with bright glowing auroras, rivers of light, and the sun hasn't risen since. People have been catastrophising and tearing their hair out over it, scouring books and digging up old knowledge to try and figure it out, but no one has a sure lead yet. I think that would lend a needed bit of mystery to the adventure. It would mean that the tidbits which the players uncover, even in this first quest, would set them on a path towards discovery and revelation, instead of a glorified manhunt. Or perhaps maidenhunt.)

For example:

Start- The players are in one of the Ten Towns. At this stage, it doesn't matter which one (except perhaps Targos, it would be helpful if they didn't start in Targos). It also doesn't matter when they arrived. Perhaps they just walked through the gates last night after a long trek and are facing the bleary, gloomy morning, or perhaps they have been staying there for some time already. They hear some gossip a body which was found outside in the snow not two days ago, frozen solid and apparently murdered, and the citizens are in no small amount of confusion over the whole matter. They can hear this in the market, in the tavern, perhaps a traveling scrimshander shakes their grizzled head and laments what Ten Towns has come to. The important part is that they learn three things:

A- Nobody knows who he was, but he was last seen alive in the local tavern a three nights ago.

B- The body, still frozen stiff, is being held in the undercroft of the town's church.

C- Hlin Trollbane, who arrived in town yesterday, is offering a 100 gold reward for bringing the killer to justice.

Now, these three clues give players three possible avenues to start investigating. They are concrete, actionable, and fairly conclusive. They could go to the tavern to ask questions about the victim at their last known whereabouts. They could go to the church to investigate the body itself. Or they could find Hlin to talk about that reward. Each subsequent node should give the players at least three clues leading to other nodes, so that as they accrue clues, the adventure builds up in a satisfying way. They feel like they are onto something. The clues found at each node should point both horizontally and vertically, so that the players feel a sense of progress, too.

The adventure looks like this so far

(A)- The Tavern

At the tavern, the players can learn that:

If the players talk to the barkeep, they learn that Hlin Trollbane (C), a retired bounty hunter, came by the inn asking questions about the 'murder.' She's been traveling around Ten Towns and got here yesterday. News travels quickly in Ten-Towns, and she came as fast as she could muster a sled. She took a room upstairs and gave the barkeep a job letter. The letter is offering 100 gold for anyone who can help solve the murders (yes, murders- that's plural).

The patrons can tell the players that the man was found frozen stiff outside a couple of days ago. Must have been out in the cold all night. They rushed The Body (B) to the church.

From talking further to the patrons, they can also learn that the man was in the tavern the night before he was found dead. He was acting very jovial and smug, boasting about how he outwitted the township of Targos (D) and escaped with his life.

Bonus Clues:

Perhaps with further questioning and a check or two, the players can learn even more clues. If they look deeply, they can learn a bit more about the man's situation, and that he spoke to several different people that night. The man was seen arriving in town with Torg's Merchant Caravan (E), a trading outfit led by a dwarf named Torrga Icevein, known as a shrewd and unscrupulous profiteer. People talk in Ten-Towns, and everyone knows a sliver or two of everyone else's business.

The man was also seen talking to a group of four strange-looking people. Out-of-towners who looked to be travelers of some sort. A man, an old woman, and a Halfling. They had a bodyguard with them too, who loomed silently by the table all evening. These are the members of the Arcane Brotherhood who have come to the Dale, and we will see that Dzaan's storyline diverges a little from the written version.

(B)- The Body

Brother Oswald

At the church, players learn that they're keeping the body in the undercroft until family can come to get him. That might take a long time, because currently no one there knows who he is. He's certainly not from around here, and that's all they can tell.

The clergy don't take kindly to gawpers, and unless the players have some kind of official mandate from the town's Speaker or perhaps the Reeve (if there is one), the will have to content themselves with talking to the cleric who stands watch over the undercroft for clues rather than seeing the body itself. The cleric in question, Brother Oswald (he isn't in the book, I just made him up) mumbles something about wanting to prevent hysteria spreading through the town. He also grumbles about Hlin Trollbane (C), who came by earlier being similarly nosy. He will reluctantly answer some of their questions, but chides them that if they simply want to gossip, they can go to The Tavern (A).

Brother Oswald can tell the players that Dannika Greysteel (F), a local scholar, busybody, and notorious tale-spinner, helped examine the body when it came in to the church. As a scholar, people often go to her with problems of a magical origin. She took some notes and went away to write a report on the matter, which she intends to submit to the town Speaker. She has a house of the edge of town where she does her work- namely, looking closely at the climate and weather of Icewind Dale.

Bonus Clues:

With some further prodding, perhaps a persuasion check or some kind of promise -- an assurance of good intent and a vow not to spread gossip -- Brother Oswald might let the players see the body itself. If they do get to see the body, they learn that the man is indeed frozen solid, even now. He was ostensibly killed by a stab wound to the heart, which lies open, frosted, and grisly. Brother Oswald tells them that the weapon was a Dagger of Pure Ice, which was embedded in the man's chest. Dannika (F) took it away with her to study. The man's eyes are a shade of blue like ice, cold and bright.

(C)- Hlin Trollbane

Hlin

Hlin Trollbane is a retired bounty hunter who came to Ten-Towns because the area is her family's home.
After traveling across Faerun, she wanted to return to her roots. Hlin Trollbane talks straightly to the players and lays out her offer to them. She has decided to take matters into her own hands in light of the reluctance or indifference of the Speakers of Ten-Towns to do anything about these crimes. She wants to employ them to solve what she thinks are a series of connected murders across the district.

She will tell the players that she thinks this murder is connected to two other which have happened in other towns over the past month or so. Her cousin, Alrik Trollbane (G) was found murdered in Bryn Shander last month, and a Halfling in Easthaven (H) was found a few weeks later. Hlin has been unable to gather hard evidence, but hearsay surrounding the murders concerns them being found frozen solid with an icy dagger plunged into their hearts.

She tells players it might be a good idea to look for leads in The Tavern (A)- that was where the victim was last seen. She also explains that she attempted to go and have a look at The Body (B) at the church, but the head cleric wouldn't let her in. She explains that the local Reeve in charge of the militia (if there is one in this town) will sometimes deputise people to carry out the law in Ten-Towns. The cleric would probably let them in if they had an official sanction.

After all that, we see that our quest structure looks a bit like this:

The players now have loads of options to choose from, and the clues draw them deeper and deeper into the world of Ten-Towns. The quest introduces new characters and they actually have a reason for speaking to them, rather than just being approached in the street. It feels a little more organic, and thanks to the structure, a little more player-led.

I think the best way to go from here is to reduce the amount of nodes in the next tier down. I would be inclined to have the clues point more and more in the same direction so that, wherever the players end up going, they are drawn to a similar conclusion. The evidence points to the answer.

So, for example, Targos (D), Alrik Trollbane (G), and Easthaven (H) would all give information about human sacrifice in Ten-Towns. They might also all point towards Torrga's Caravan (E) because it would have been in each town when the murders were committed.

I'm going to throw this post up for now, and I'll add another on the tier two clues soon, and how that feeds into tier three as the campaign progresses, as well as how the quest might get resolved.

Bye for now,

O

A Grim Oasis

 "One would scarcely call Leviathan Bay a town in any reasonable sense of the word, so much as a squalid huddle of filth and misery built in the lee of a reeking mountain of bones and blubber."

    -Excerpt from the journal of Eliphas Quinn, renowned traveler and historian

    A town built beside the corpse of a beast so large it had no business ever being alive, so immense that its body is an ecosystem unto itself. It is a town where butchery is the main profession, blood and flesh the currency.

Monster fish taxidermy is my new favourite Instagram page

 

I'm not going to try a photo-bash a landscape of the place because I think it would look rubbish and it's better in my imagination anyway- as I hope it will be in yours after you read this article

    For some context, I recently read In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. It's a retelling of the historical account of the whaling ship Essex and its trouble with a particularly aggressive whale in 1820. When they were out in the Pacific, an enormous whale rammed the ship and sank it, leaving the crew of about 20 men totally stranded in their life boats. They had to navigate the ocean without a map, and many of them starved. Those few who managed to return were never the same, broken physically and mentally. It was the story which originally inspired the tale of obsession and vengeance Moby Dick, and it goes into immense detail about the context of the Nantucket whaling industry, as well as the physical and emotional toil of the job and the horrors of being stranded at sea for weeks on end. If you've ever wanted to read about the effects of severe starvation and dehydration on the human body, this book is for you. Philbrick also does a great job of describing how disgusting and visceral the job of hunting, killing, and rendering whales for oil actually is, with one passage describing the twenty-foot geyser of blood which happens when you pierce the arteries of a ten-ton whale with a spear. It's gross.

Would heartily recommend if you like books about whales or if you are a bit morbid (but not if you're into animal welfare, tbh).

This book inspired me too. China Mieville's weird fantasy is a favourite of mine.

 

 

   Anyway, back to the fantasy...

    The monster washed ashore during a titanic storm, one that will be remembered for generations. When the storm was calmed, the shoreline was flattened, quaint coastal towns and ports were erased from the face of the earth. Atop all the devastation, the felled trees, mounds of debris and banks of fetid mud, was a great heaving mountain of flesh. A malformed titan breathing its last. The squall left it stranded in the open air. It was accustomed to living at unimaginable depth and pressure. A deep dark where caustic horrors creep along the sea floor, along trenches and chasms beneath the waves. Above the surface, its body became swollen and formless, its muscles unable to shift its massive bulk. Its great mouth was studded with teeth like a dense forest of ghostly, branchless trees, festooned with kelp and strands of unidentifiable tissue. Its eyes strained and wept, squinting in the light.Where the sun cracked its oily skin, small creatures from the surface world began to sip at the rank effluvium that flowed out. Flies and maggots began to seethe in the muck. Ticks which had lived alongside it in the deep dark dotted its bulging flanks, hideous arthropods as big as cows, with their jagged maws buried in the creature's thick epidermis. Pores as big as potholes and brimming with foul lymph pocked its hide. A mountain of waxy, grisly purpure. Raw for all to see.

The surrounding land was forever changed. The dead leviathan nourished the earth with its body. In a short time, a profusion of life sprang up in the midden heap around the decaying behemoth. Plant life bloomed in the marshes and rock pools. Vivid fungi and lichens fed on the oil-soaked sand. A rainbow sheen came to rest on the water's surface, on puddles, as if everything were coated in a thin slick of oil. Creatures too - crustaceans and reptiles - grew large off this grim oasis. Giant arachnoid crabs which creep along the sea floor, through the effluence and rotten flesh that makes its way there, feeding on it, began to come up into the shallower waters each spring to spawn- a time of plentiful food but also danger for the inhabitants of the town.

 

Strange, ornate crabs like this, but bigger.

 

Big enough to contend with the beasts which stalk the swamps surrounding the mountain

  

It would be a nice place for a holiday if it wasn't for the... everything else

 In the wake of the storm, the region was wiped clean of people. A tabula rasa, free from the weight of history or the stain of industry which had encroached upon civilised lands. Entire settlements were swept away, claimed by the sea. The shoreline was flattened, remodeled, unrecognisable. A new wild. In the intervening years between then and now, people came creeping back, looking to settle again. This new and empty frontier of flat wetland was difficult to traverse, having no roads except twisting, unmapped waterways. A perfect place to escape the sclerotic gaze of the Silent City.

    The mountain formed by the creature's body was the region's only landmark, and people flocked to it as the stories spread. They came not only from the land but from the sea as well. Travellers and voyagers, escapees, merchants, and the morbidly curious came together by the shallow bay which formed on the leeward side of the leviathan's carcass. The place became a haven of sorts. An anchorage. People found that as the corpse nourished the life which surrounded the mountain, that life was a source of nourishment for them in turn. Not only for food, but for oil as well. Crews of whalers weary of the sea took to climbing the mountain in search of blubber. Other whalers in the region began to take their cargo to the town for processing and for sale. They would set up their catch on the shore of the bay, in the shadow of the mountain, and go about their bloody butchering, rendering whale blubber into precious oil.

Leviathan Bay

   If one were to actually travel to this place, despite having probably received a multitude of warnings not to, what might they find?

    Today, the first thing a traveller to the town of Leviathan Bay would notice is the smell. The musty, suffocating reek of putrid fish, burning oil, and the shit of ten-thousand seabirds is borne upon the wind and up the noses of any unfortunate enough to be within three miles of the place. From inland, the town is obscured by a ridge of hills which any visitor would notice to be somewhat incongruent with the flat, marshy plains to either side. These hills are flush with intensely coloured jungle and crowned with pale, angular protrusions. That this is the carcass of a vast sea creature might only become apparent once they come closer, once they see its skull.

    On the road to Leviathan Bay, one passes Skull Mount- the ragged, empty head of the beast which gives the town its name: millions of tons of bleached bone and sagging, ragged flesh baked hard by the tropical sun all towering over lush, lurid vegetation. Sea birds flock and swarm in the gaping hollows of its eyes, the ruined labyrinths of its nasal passages. A chalky crust of guano is accumulated at its top, like cliffs. It runs down the thing in streaks. Closer up, the sound is deafening. The birds' cries, shrill and raucous, fill the air.

Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth, near Edinburgh. Imagine this but with added skull and jungle.

I think this is a Right Whale, it looks suitably monolithic and mountain-like doesn't it?

 

    What can one say about the town itself? A town in such strange and exotic circumstances, this malignant paradise, ought be an equally bizarre and dangerous place. But for all the outlandish allure of its location, the town looks make-shift. Almost temporary, as if whoever set up didn't expect to be here for long. Little more than a tawdry pile of timbers nailed together. Old vessels have been upturned and made into dwellings, Ramshackle cabins are precariously perched on stilts. Lean-to huts balance upon larger buildings. Thick plumes of oily smoke drift skywards, a sign of the town's gruesome industry.

    For all the stink of the ocean, there is a human stink here too. A noisy, bustling place, Leviathan Bay is stuffed with people, with drinking dens, wet markets, bawdy houses, and dark alleys. Effluence and garbage make the boardwalks slippery, and oil lamps cast a dim, flickering light on proceedings.

 

 Butchers and Hunters

    The mountain, the body: that colossal heap of mottled, putrid blubber and bones serves the town's people as its primary source of income and fuel. Thus, butchery is the town's most lauded occupation. Crews of whalers grown weary of the sea and its cruelties stick to the shore. Known as flesh gangs, they vie fiercely with each other while wading knee-deep through gore for access to the most prime sections of blubber.

Their profession comes with no small amount of renown amongst the townspeople. They are armed with razor-sharp blades. Not mere fleshing knives, but huge implements- serrated greatswords, saws, cleavers, huge tongs, wicked machetes. They carry these openly, almost proudly even within the town. They look imposing and brutal, obviously used to labouring with great weight in the harsh sun.

The flesh gangs' tools would all be appropriately up-scaled, naturally.

The Golem Shop

The sign above the Golem Shop door

    According to the law of the dead, it is a heinous crime to interfere with a corpse. Desecration of the dead is akin to killing one's gods. An apostate mage, a renegade who seeks anonymity, has set up a shop here. Using the flesh and bone gleaned from the leviathan's carcass, the proprietor is able to create bespoke constructs animated by magic. They can ply their ghastly trade without the impending fear of the agents of the corpse lords coming to their door.

    The shop is known amongst certain circles for producing golems of a curious nature. Strange and misshapen, an attempt at the human form, but only an attempt. And one without a great deal of success, it must be said. The constructions are solid but they lack finesse, clumsy in their execution, almost childish. They are as if the maker is merely approximating human anatomy without knowing its inner workings.

    The thick, rubbery skin of the leviathan makes these golems more durable than the average flesh construct. Although, because the parts used to make them are essentially reconstituted, their overall integrity is probably lower than a golem made from parts which have grown together via more natural methods. They have small, sunken eyes. More like pinholes than functional organs. Their mouths are little more than an asymmetrical horizontal slit in their otherwise featureless nub of a head. Long, misshapen limbs teminate in a clumsy mass of digits. Yet there is brute strength in them. The flesh gangs sometimes requisition the help of one of these mute, brawny pinheads. A useful addition to any team which seeks to harvest yet more flesh from the mountain.

 

 

So Who's In Charge Here?

Who would the players go to in search of jobs? Is there a Mayor? You could put one in but I highly doubt it. Leviathan Bay is a free-for-all where no one tolerates being ruled. This is what the townsfolk came here to escape. Perhaps there is a charter of sorts which suggests how people shold go about their business, a buy-in which seeks to make the town a place where anyone can come and go as they please.

Other NPCs

Who else might be coming through Leviathan Bay with the players? Who calls this place home?

• Sailors- The obvious choice. Sailors and seafarers come and go every day and night. They bring wares, cargo from all over the continent, the world, even. They smuggle, they drink, they fight. They wear odd clothes and sport strange tattoos and haircuts, tokens of their travels. Their skin comes in all colours. People from all walks of life, all clans, creeds, and cultures feel the call of the sea.
  
•  Traders- A merchant can stand to make a good living off the oil rendered from the carcass of the leviathan, as well ass other whales which are hauled into the bay. These merchants broker deals and give a cut to the sorry, blood-soaked butchers who do the more gruesome work

• 

  Savage, gibbering, and insane
  

  Hunters- The townspeople also rely on other creatures on the mountain. They eat the birds which mass on the its sheer slopes. They hunt them for sustenance and eat their eggs, collect their guano which accumulates in lithic formations below their nests. Armed with nets and spears, the town's hunters also seek crabs, alligators, and other meats for selling at Leviathan Bay's wet markets and roadside meat traders.
• Hirelings- It would come as no surprise that there are some people in Leviathan Bay who have no wish to stay there a moment longer. A person desperate enough might seek to sell their services for passage aboard a ship, or a caravan through the swamps in hopes they might find a better life elsewhere. However unlikely this better life may be, perhaps they are simply yearning to go somewhere which smells a little less foul.
• Eaters of the Dead- Those poor, desperate souls who succumb to the disease of the ghoul exist on the fringes of every society. They scrabble and claw at the periphery of society, looking for scraps, their feral eyes watching from the dark. Wracked with an insatiable hunger, they lose the ability to think rationally and are driven by this primal urge.
  

• 

  Probably nothing so obvious.
  

  Agents of the Unquiet- The dead do not rest in this world. They dream and they hunger. Their spies are everywhere, those amongst the living who have pledged their life so that they may rest decadently in death. The Corpse Lords despise those who do not fall under their dominion. Those who are living and free are anathema to the law of the dead. What's more, people come to these lands to escape persecution. No dark abbey rests atop a hill. No watching gibbet or tower looms over the town. Not yet, anyway.
• The cult of the Fire- Adherents to an ancient faith, this cult strives to overthrow the Kyriarchy of the Corpse Lords. The believe in the cleansing, changing power of fire, and they seek to bring that might to bear against their calcified overlords. Rumour has it that a number of ships carrying barrels of gunpowder and weapons have been seen coming and going in the town of late. They are using the town as a base to smuggle supplies into the country for their ongoing efforts.
  

This thing. Isn't it gross?

But also incredible?

That's about it for now. I hope to write some more on this world later. As you might have gathered from some of the descriptions and allusions to the Silent City, the Unquiet, the Corpse Lords and such, there is a bunch more to this setting I have yet to commit to type. It's all in various notebooks I have strewn around the place. I'll be making an effort to collate it all here when I have the time.

I've been taking inspiration from the writings of James C. Scott when developing this world. Namely Weapons of the Weak and The art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.

Peace,

O