Thursday, February 27, 2014

Return to Kalak Nur Session 3 follow up

Return to Kalak Nur Session 3 follow up

The below assumes it's been about 11 hours. Your escapades ended around 3 AM.

2050 XP each (if this would take you up more than one level, go to 1 xp below the second level you would have gained)

From what you can find, Mocata had 35,672 GP on hand in coins. Kalak-Nur is a somewhat cash-poor place, so this would keep the stronghold intact and goatmen fed for another 6 months if left alone.
Tell me how much you take. 

Sir Ward and Blixa wake up covered in little bumps. They feel like little objects under the skin. Your bodies will flush them out in another 12 hours. 

Q-Bot has trouble seeing for a day.

Treasure:
164 intact ruby spikes, worth 300 GP each. You'll get XP for these when you get them to a place to sell them or find a buyer. The Grand Bazaar of Targenmoor is in a month.
4 Giant Khopesh. Takes STR 16 or more to wield, -2 to hit for every point of STR below that. 2d8 damage. (Value as masterwork greatsword)
2 Anti-Magic Orbs individually like a scroll with three Dispel Magics (lvl5) on it, together like a scroll with one Anti-Magic Shell (lvl12) on it
1 Anti-Magic Orb like a scroll with two Dispel Magics (lvl5) on it (the other one this guy was holding broke/was expended
4 Stone Killer Spears STR 14 or more to wield, 2d6 damage, destroys armor it pierces, can pierce stone twice

Salvaged Robot Modules
Q-Bot can add ONE of the following, or swap one he's got for another:
Welding Torch: sheds light as a torch, 1d6 damage on a melee hit, can weld 1 ft of metal per 5 rounds.
Battle Droid: Attacks advance as a Fighter (+level to hit) in Melee or Ranged. If you roll this again, have both.
Independent Limbs: Your may detach your limbs from your body and operate them independently. Your arms cannot see and your head cannot walk or anything like that, but sticking your head on your arm might get a functional you into some tight places. (If you roll this again, each limb has some form of sensory input equivalent to very dim lighting that is relayed to the Droid PC’s brain.)


-Santos Christo: Hooray! You have saved the legendary adventurer. His age is catching up to him, and he must leave in a hurry, though. His tribe has a moot, some sort of singing thing determined by the position of the other planets. He is very grateful, and will return after if you want. You can ask him questions before he  goes.

-Augustus Grantz is terrible at being Mocata. He has the face and accent, and that's about it. He's playing along, but clearly wants to get lost in a lab with a staff working under him. He's interested in robots and rockets, not leading a semi-military organization. You've got a week or so to figure something out before the goat-men and dog-men rebel.

-The mansion/barracks is 3 stories above ground. There are lushly appointed quarters for "Mocata" and guests, sparser quarters for the 200 or so goat-men and 45 dog-men stationed here, and several guest-rooms and studies. You've got the run of the place for now, as "Mocata's Elite Guard" or whatever, but see the info under Augustus Grantz above.

-The Dungeon is 3 stories, from what you've seen. The inner circles are: 
--top: magic-users being kept barely alive and slowly drained of blood in weird harnesses
--middle: vampires being fed the blood from the magic-users, in different harnesses, their entrails regularly dumped into some device and fed below
--bottom: the wreckage of two spaceships that had been combined into a device of obscure purpose, covered with a techno-organic virus. A pile of rotting ruby crabs. A harness into which a viscous liquid pumps, and a growing hum can be heard. Not hard to figure out this is what the processed magical blood and entrails is being fed in to, although what it is turned in to before going into these tubes and what the harness did is unclear.
----There's a passage to a cavernous chamber, several stories high. On the ground is a shape is traced in salt, a shape you can't quite describe. It hurts to look at. Inside the shape is a metal foot 15 feet high, what looks like several chunks of buildings made of odd materials, and other inscrutable metal objects. Let me know if you go inside the shape or otherwise disturb it.
The outer rings are hallways of cells, switchbacks, secret control rooms, conduits the size of a halfling or so, some hidden as well. You do not have control down here. There are signs that creatures still pass through. There are goat-man corpses that have been half-eaten. The cells you can get to safely all seem sealed still, though, and full of weird creatures.

Reports from the Dog-man Captains:
-"The matter of concern down below has gotten worse. I had just increased all prison patrols to a minimum of three guards before we lost contact with the spider-goat platoon. Your reticence to discuss the events when you went down there prevents my full ability to carry out my duties, but I have faith in your wisdom.
Unfortunately, one of our brothers lost in the attack had just reset all the passcodes. We'll need your memorized master list."

-"Patrols of the mountain to the West of the stronghold have been reporting strange movements in The Westlands. This morning, our patrol was attacked by zombies for the first time in over a year. The unthinking undead took them by surprise, almost as if some party had placed them strategically. I await your instructions for the afternoon patrol."

-"A messenger creature of some kind was shot down by an outer patrol, heading North. Having reviewed your picture-books of creatures from other realms, it seems to be some poorly constructed mutant combination of a pigeon and a bumblebee, although there are tech components of unknown nature or function. A human eye was removed from it's side, and a tiny box and indecipherable note were recovered. They are included in the sack accompanying this report."

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Santicore 2013 vol 2 updates/edits


There have been edits and updates since uploading yesterday...
Trash your current file of the PDF and re-download by clicking
Santicore's dread visage up above (or in the last post, link there updated) and keep on enjoying all this wonderful madness!

Namely: some name order issues fixed in the Table of Contents and updates/edits to the entries on pages 105-107, 148-152, 160-161, and minor edits elsewhere.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

SECRET SANTICORE 2013 Volume 2 PDF is HERE!


 Secret Santicore 2013 volume 2 PDF


There are so many awesome and useful entries here, and so much wonderful art!
Again, the PDF is fully bookmarked and the ToC entries are clickable to go to the page of each entry. The ToC list at the bottom of each page is clickable, too.

There may be a few lingering mistakes I didn't catch in how I put things together, so feel free to contact me with corrections and suggestions at metalvsskin at geemale dot calm. I'll get to those when time allows.

ENJOY! I'd love to hear what people are digging as you find time to go through this.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

CHARGES FROM YOUR LOCAL LIEGE



1. Murder, unprovoked, loot gained thereby untaxed: 75% of loot reduced 5% for each day spent in public stockades

2.Murder, unprovoked, tax willingly given: 50% of loot - praise the kingdom!

3. Murder, provoked, tax 30% of loot if taxes willingly paid, 60% if taken by duress

4. Property damage, in pursuit of selfish goals: 100 GP per establishment affected, 50 GP to owner, 50 GP to authorities

5. Property damage, in pursuit of community goals: reduce above by 50%

6. Open carrying and/or display of weapons in a civilized area: 25 GP license tax per day

7. Vehement Carousing, to the distraction of others: 10 GP first offence, 30 GP thereafter

8. Failing to inform Liege or associates of major local changes (IE enemies removed or freed): 45 GP, 22 GP refund if information given at time of charge aids in future victory

9. Open worship of non-local deity: 45 GP, license issued

10. Open consorting with Liege enemies: must disclose all information known, 2 teeth will be removed after.

11. Seducing local citizen: 7 lashes, 1 GP

12. Seducing member of Liege's harem: 14 lashes, 2 GP

(written for +Claytonian JP as JOESKY tax for the last blog entry. It or the ideas might be useful to someone at some time. Didn't want it to get lost in G+ comments.)


ART: Pieter Breughel the Elder painted this scene, "Paying the Tax." It was destroyed or something, but his son painted 40 copies, so this is one of those.


EDIT: THE OTHER KIND OF CHARGES FROM YOUR LOCAL LIEGE:

1. Thee Crowne Has Withdrawn Support, and Her Generals Have Lefte; Thou Must Leade Mye Armies Unto Victory in the current conflict or Be Put To Torture

2. Seize the magickal well from our neighboring Barony, and a mile surrounding it thereupon; Hold these for a weeke whilst I finish other business

3. My earnest and goode knight, Sir Guffin, lays siege at mine command to the tower of Albrecht the Hard; it pleases me that this siege continue, and not succeed or fail; I charge thee group of scoundrels to discreetly sabotage the siege weapons of Sir Guffin's forces; if thou are caught, this conversation never happened; if thou succeed, riches are thine.

4. Thou sneakest this food for many mouths into the tower of Albrecht the Hard without attracting the eye of Sir Guffin's forces.

5. Citizens and goodly maidens of my harem alike have disappeared at their privy of late; thou shall searchest thee sewers for them, and murder any foul beasts who may be responsible

6. A star from the heavens hath fallen within the Black Forest upon my lands; venture into that dread place and bring back news; and any precious metals or blessings the meteor carried thus.

7. I seek this night to command a demon, through dread ritual in the keep's basement; my sage tells me I can ask of it most ponderous questions and return it to the abyss with no danger; thou wilst stand just outside and make sure none intrude

8. Travel forth and speak to the common people; under guise of ignorance, discover the opinion of my rule from those in my many provinces

9. My beloved advisor has angered the King and been banished; he is also hated by the people, whom may have hired parties unknown to slay him; escort him outside these lands without incident and fortune, land, and title are yours.

10. A group of native slaves have escaped the project to erect a monument to my magnificence in this damned foreign place; track them through the forest and return them so they may be made example of.

11. Take this great sealed casket and scroll to the University of Learning in the North; at no time are you to open them. Protect them from all comers and brigands, or be branded criminal most foul.

12. Travel to the capitol city and gain intelligence which might allow my army secret entry.

13. Discreetly slay the king, so that I might lead our Kingdom to greatness.

14. Lead the great beast which has been stuck in the bay and caused great destruction back into the sea so we do not invoke Poseidon's wrath.

15. Pirate the ships of our enemies; thou must meet with my Master of Coin every other fortnight to pay taxes on your winnings.

16. (DM rolls twice and combines results somehow)

Thursday, February 13, 2014

Sometimes The Ideas All Hold Hands...

This blog might be pretty quiet for awhile, or quieter than I thought...
While working on Secret Santicore 2013 (Volume 1 was released on PDF on January 27th, scroll down and get it!) I would come to the blog and vomit out ideas into a draft, intending to edit and refine for later blogging. The thing is, they started fermenting in my subconscious...talking to each other...fucking like bunnies...a few things clicked and cast them all in a different light...

So all these ideas I had and was going to post as separate blog entries want to be a dungeon. Maybe even a mega-. They all work in Kalak-Nur, too, and I'd love to run the thing after a lot of writing and refining. I'm a huge fan of randomly created dungeons, and tend to run things sandbox style, but a coherent thematic structure in a dungeon can bear a lot of fruit and be it's own weird experience while leaving a lot of room for variety. (orange phrases above are links to other people's blogs that are good. There are many more good blogs, these are two of them.)
So the creative output I had planned to have here while I work on getting the rest of Santicore into PDFs is mostly tied up in that. I guess I won't be done with big projects when Santicore is done, after all. I'm eager for the new challenge and to take on something big that springs from my own creativity and allows me to channel some creative influences that have been building up.
I believe in contributing to a community, and that includes the people I play and talk about RPGs with on G+. I'd like to have a high signal to noise ratio, that is, a high ratio of my own creative output (running games, making blog posts that are things others can use) compared to output that is social-only (IE commenting on others' posts, ephemeral G+ posts, etc.) However, I need to let this thing bake a bit before I figure out if I can separate some of this stuff back out into postable form...and I'd like to run the thing for people who know nothing of what's inside.
All that said, for various reasons I will have to write out and post stats for the Bug People of Kalak-Nur soon, so that's going to happen.
And there's Santicore 2013 V2 and V3 coming up, all of the amazingness from everybody that has been like an RPG grad course for me.



Art in this post by Sarah Horrocks. Go buy her stuff.