Kuo Toa Gas Trap

The Kuo Toa begin to sacrifice the old and the week when they are being invaded. It is an honor. The sacrificed know that they will serve the tribe in death. 

Some are made into Kuo Toan gas traps.

The details of the process are still unknown, but somehow the body of the sacrificed Kuo Toan is hollowed out and dried. The body is then pumped with poison gas and sealed. The body becomes fragile like paper.

The Kuo Toa then place these bodies where intruders are likely to tear them. When they tear they pop almost like a balloon before collapsing almost like a soufflé. Anyone Directly next to the corpse when it pops must save vs. poison or die. Those not directly next to it but within 10’ get a +1 to their save and those from 10’ to 20’ get a + 2. Beyond 20’ the poison is not effective. The poison cloud will dissipate in 1d4 turns.

Explorers of the ruins of Zenopus’s tower have found one of these traps behind a door. The corpse had his hand attached to the door so that when they opened it, the corpses arm ripped off spraying gas into the room. No one died.

Fish Cult Today Session 3: Our Fish Cult Grows

The Aytollah Goblini, Goblin Fanatic (Maxime Golubchik)

Brutal Pete, Dwarf (Aleksandr Revzin)

Frigga, Witch (Chris P)

Pitwin, Gnome Child (Nick Kuntz)

Sapphean, Blue Wizard (Josh Rapp)

Creedence Clearwater, Fighting Man (NPC)

Goblin Followers, Goblins  (NPCs)

Salty Dogpants, 0 level witness to absurdity (NPC)

Part I: Recap

It was a combat heavy session. The party snuck back to the hills above Portown during the full moon. On the edge of the sea cliffs stood Frigga, performing some sort of moon rite. The party recognizes her from here and there in the multiverse.

Frigga hires and equips the NPCs (she’s the only one who can enter town without causing a scene) and the party heads into the dungeon.

The party encounters some cultists and some bandits, who are also cultists. All are killed or subdued. The Party finds a Fish Cult Newsletter, mentioning two new religious texts. One is about The Cult of the Death of Brutal Pete and the other is The Beatitudes of the Insane Woman. There is also something about a potluck.

Then they find a room to the east that has 3 laughing goblins. They are mocking a crazed dwarf who is digging out a stairway in the south end of the room. He is crazed and minding his own business but Brutal Pete covets his fancy plate mail.  There is struggle watched in horror by the NPCs and with glee by the lauging goblins. The dwarf dies. Brutal Pete asks the laughing goblins if he will end up like the dwarf. The laughing goblins say, “eventually.”

Brutal Pete takes the dwarf’s stuff, plate mail and a nice pickaxe.

The Party then makes its way to the Fish temple, avoiding a gelatinous cube. They get to the room they stole the statue of Blipdoolploop. They decide to open a door and there is a gas trap. No one dies.  There is also a magic mouth it shouts in the fish cult language. Summoning the “Assassination squad.” The party lays down oil and caltrops, the works. They burn 7 naked fish cultists to death. The NPCs start drinking.

There is then a comically long fight when the Kuo Toans arrive. They are eventually vanquished except for 1 Kuo Toan who is charmed by Pitwin. Everyone is going to need some sort of magical hearing to avoid hearing loss after 16 gunshots were fired in a stone vaulted underground room at once.

The party gets a bunch of barbed harpoons, a cool silver helmet and two manuscripts one called The Cult of the Death of Brutal Pete and the other The Beatitudes of the Insane Woman.

The party surveys the room that the Kuo Toans entered from. It is a temple. Pitwin tags the temple. There are frescoes of people making out with fish and some statues that do not seem artistically significant enough to steal.

On the altar, which is more of a lectern, there is another manuscript entitled The Fish Prayer. Frigga takes it. But not until, addressing Blibdoolploop directly and proclaiming herself a new envoy of her will and vowing to cleanse the god of unworthy followers. Frigga gets a 12 on her reaction roll with modifiers, but there is no immediate response.

The party leaves the dungeon taking the charmed Kuo Toan named Fibshbert with them.  The NPCs are bewildered and drunk.

Part II: Treasure

The Beatitudes of the Insane Woman

This short manuscript is a cycle of 12 four-line stanzas. The subject matter is a woman who gazes into the eyes of Blibdoolploop and is driven mad. The madness is presented as a punishment, but also as a desirable thing. The woman is at times considered cursed and at times blessed. The last stanzas describe a ritual celebrating her madness with her present. This manuscript has potential but unclear uses in spell research.

The Cult of the Death of Brutal Pete

This manuscript describes a cult that worships the idea of Brutal Pete dying. The cult formed recently and this document lays out the reasons for why Brutal Pete should be killed. Some of it is racist against dwarfs but the main thrust is that Brutal Pete has a way to control gods and this is blasphemous. The alarming part of this manuscript is that it appears that this cult is not solely made up of Blibdoolploop worshippers. There are many other gods that want Brutal Pete dead, apparently and not all the gods are evil. Some lawful gods view Brutal Pete’s actions as inherently chaotic and blasphemous and according to this document want him dead too. The document also mentions some “lesser heretics,” Barnabus Sleet, Brax The Savage, Lars Hootman, Magic Meryl, and Sapphean,

The Fish Prayer

As far as you can tell this thing is a lot like the Song of Solomon, except about loving fish instead of people and instead of milk and honey, it is fish and pearls.

The Plate Mail of Üle Oakenballs

This is +2 Plate Mail. It is light and unencumbering. It has designs identifying the wearer as a member of the Oakenballs clan. It is also imprinted with the Üle Oakenballs’s memories. Brutal Pete gets glimpses of his adventures and the whispers of chaos that grew louder as Üle grew more powerful. Eventually Üle was unable to resist the whispers of chaos. He went mad, put on his armor, grabbed his pick and wandered until he came to Portown and started digging in the dungeon, his mind completely destroyed, consumed by the ramblings of chaos.

Brutal Pete’s soul has no fused with Üle’s or become infected by this chaos. It is hard to tell exactly what happened once he fought in the armor, just as Üle did so many times.

If Pete was not subjected to racial level limits before he is now. If he tries to exceed level 8 as a dwarf he will go mad and compulsively dig into the earth building or expanding some dungeon somewhere. This is not a curse. This is the normal fate of all dwarfs from Üle home demi-plane. It is possible that divine intervention or wish spells can mitigate this. The laughing goblins were right, your fate is now eventually the same as Üle’s.

But hey, +2 Plate Mail.

The adorned pickaxe is worth 1,000gp and is normal.

Part III: The Interrogation of Fishbert

This is what you can glean of the area from Fishbert. The spawning beds and the lair are to the south of the temple down an underground river. There are many places that the Kuo Toans don't go. He doesn't know exactly why. The temple you are invading now is mostly for the human cultists so he hasn't spent that much time there, mostly just comes up to the temple room for smooching sessions.

Lawful Good Carousing Table

I have a character in Jeff Rients’s Vaults of Vyzor Campaign. He is a Lawful Good Cleric named Kerf Merklin. Vaults of Vyzor has a vibrant drunken underbelly where PCs can get a lot of xp in between dungeon delves. A lot of PCs use the carousing tables developed by Jeff. Kerf however doesn’t like to get seedy in the underbelly. He does his carousing with the lord.  So, I asked if I could develop a carousing table aimed at bland, uptight boring Clerics.

I took ideas from Jeff’s carousingtable as well as this post on carousing tables. Goblin punch also explored expanding the idea of carousing into more general downtime activities. I also looked at the bible and I got an entry from Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

LAWFUL GOOD CAROUSING TABLE

Pay 1d6 x 100gp to get that much xp. Your PC is spends this money in furtherance his/her god. Religious fervor fills your PC with uncontrollable passion. Save vs. spells or roll on the table below and suffer the consequences devoutness.

1.     You are Fasting:  -1 on all rolls for next adventure can’t drink any potions or anything or you lose all your xp for carousing and for the adventure.

2.     You make embarrassing theological mistake. While spouting off church doctrine you say something that even laymen know to be false. Everyone now considers you a fool and a blowhard.

3.     Theological Rift: You engage in a debate with followers of other gods. The debate turns ugly and you have temporarily earned the enmity of other gods. You can’t be healed by followers of other gods until you make offerings equal to 1000gp times your level.

4.     Stay away from the Apocrypha: In an attempt to know your god better you read some stuff hidden away in the temple basement. You find out some embarrassing god facts and your god is Unable to use cleric abilities until you repent and complete on minor task for your god.

5.     Too much old time religion: bit by a snake in demonstration of your god’s power save vs. poison or start adventure with one paralyzed arm.

6.     Too much old time religion: You can only speak in tongues for the duration of your next adventure.

7.     High horse too high: while pamphleteering you alienate a historically disadvantaged group. You have -2 on reaction rolls with all non-human humanoids, even if you are a member of that race (way to kick the ladder down behind you).

8.     Temperance taken too far: Your preaching and moral absolutism has turned people off your god. His church is less powerful must pay an additional 1d8 * 100gp to appease your god or forfeit your xp.

9.     Temperance taken too far: Your preaching and moral absolutism has turned people off drinking and vice. You have made enemies of all the barkeeps and underworld factions until you take steps to convince people that pagan gods love booze and vice.

10.  While on a pilgrimage some kids make fun of your baldness/some other perceived physical defect. You curse at them and your god sends 2 bears to eat these kids right in front of you. It is really messed up and you are traumatized. You question whether goodness is an ideal that your god embodies or whether goodness is something defined by your god to serve his/her purposes. The money you spent goes to a fund for the families of the children killed for your bonus xp.

11.   While on a pilgrimage you stop by and ancient well-worn shrine to your god. You renew your oath of fealty at the shrine. Unfortunately it turns out that the shrine was not to your god and you have sworn loyalty to an ancient demon. You are now obligated to commit one evil act at the behest of this forgotten demon as if under a quest/geas spell.

12.  But why foreskins?: Your church elders have tasked you with bringing 100 of some body part of some enemy in exchange for a position in the church.

13.  Too much progressivism: While preaching to the masses from a soapbox in the town square, you find yourself preaching social justice. This upsets the powers that be. The powers that be are now spying on you. Don’t mess up.

14.  Your generous donations have attracted the attention of bandits. They will try to ambush you next time you leave the dungeon.

15.  Your generous donations have attracted the attention of other charitable organizations. Every time you try to buy something in town you will be accosted by fundraising volunteers you must make a successful reaction roll (7 or higher on 2d6 + charisma modifier) or pay 1d6 *10gp to their cause.

16.  Church Ponzi scheme: Your money goes to a fraudulent investment scheme perpetrated by a respected member of your church. Forfeit all xp.

17.  Wake up stark naked in a random local temple. 1-3 the clerics are majorly pissed off 4-6 they smile and thank you for stopping by.

18.  Challenge followers of another god to see whose god is more powerful. You both build huge bonfires and pray for your gods to light them. Roll 1d6: 1-2: other god lights bonfire and your god doesn’t lose all xp. 2-4: Your god responds and the other god doesn’t xp reward doubles. 5-6: both gods respond you get your xp reward but there is now a massive conflagration, a big chunk of town goes up in smoke. Roll another d6: 1-2 no one knows it was you 3-4 your fellow carousers know you did it 5 someone else knows, perhaps a blackmailer 6 everybody knows.

19.  You spend your money on building an ark. You are convinced a flood is coming. Your god was just messing with you though. There is No flood and you are now a laughing stock in the town.

20.   Stance too wide: You engaged in hypocritical behavior re-roll on the regular carousing table to see what you did. Must pay money again

Vancian Magic and the Method of Loci

© Stuart Kolakovic, 2013

Vizirian closed his eyes. Once again he was walking down the hall towards the cloister.  He had spent much of his youth sitting on the circular bench in the middle of that small walled garden. Every few hours he would slide down the bench a few inches until every detail was ingrained in his memory.
Once the space had been recorded in his mind, he could populate it with things like this. The light that bled into the hall was purplish, electric, and nauseating. He reached the cloister and there it was just as he had built it from the old tome. As the structure rotated it shifted in shape. The theory of it had been lost to time, but practically all he had to do was complete the structure with the final words and it would rush out of his head and into reality.
Vizirian pointed. He said the words. Four goblins fell asleep, no saving throw. The cloister in his mind was once again empty; the spell let loose from his mind into reality.

And that’s how magic works in my campaigns.

It is generally assumed that magic users must train so diligently to use spells that they cannot spare any time to train in weapons or armor. It is never explained in the rules why spells must be learned and learned again.

The first thing an apprentice magic user must do is built a place inside their head that they have complete recall of. This mental location serves as a place that they can store the hyper-dimensional structures that are spells. This is similar to the memory technique the method of loci.

Spells appear in spell books as long instructions on how to weave these structures in space. Magic users prepare spells by following these instructions and building the spell inside their mind in the space they have created.

Higher-level spells are bigger and require bigger spaces. One of the things that magic users do when they level up is spend time in a place that is big enough to hold higher-level spells. Eventually high-level magic users will have an entire “memory palace” inside their heads where they can place spells. Magic schools contain rooms just for this purpose. To help anchor a spell in a magic users head the spell will replace some feature of the actual place that was memorized. For example a bush will be replaced by a light spell. A sleep spell will replace a fountain. A fireball spell will replace a large statue of a horseman spearing a lion. Magic schools will often commission sculptures and features designed to be the size of different level spells. High-level magic users may have to memorize gigantic spaces to learn spells like wish and forlorn encystment.