Rival Adventuring Parties, Lethality, and What NPCs Should Know

AKA: How I Use The Crows

Spoilers ahead: 

I’m running the illustrious Deep Carbon Observatory again for some friends via the internet. At the behest of one of them, I’m writing this blog post to elaborate on how I use some of the NPCs in the adventure. 

Spoilers ahead. This is your second heads up. 

I have, several times now, terrorized my players with The Crows. The provided rival adventurers are fantastic, and I’ve only ever had to modify them by adding to their number when running an obscenely large table. This is no exaggeration: The Crows are not a regular threat, and the usual reaction to them is overwhelming fear and confusion. But how, and why? And why is this executed so well? 

It has to do with telegraphing danger. Something Patrick Stuart executes with aplomb. Not just with the crows, but also with The Giant as well. I do think there is some more work to be done and inferred by the game master with both. I think both playing and also running DCO is one of the final feats of game mastery. Knowing when to break and when to keep to the written adventure is its own skill, but that’s another subject for another day. 

Early on, We don’t have The Crows attack the players, but rather an NPC thief stealing from another NPC. This happens in the first “Act” of the adventure, and is an important moment. So long as your players are helping and trying to help during the adventure, they should see this. Because the attack only happens if they intercede: Ghar snipes the thief if the party interacts. At first glance this may feel like you are punishing the players by murdering an NPC for their good deed, but nothing is further from the truth: you are telegraphing real danger and lethality to them for their heroic behavior. 

It is the exact same with Sorla Ghyll and The Giant: Those who respect the dead seer will know of the horrors that await them, those who don’t will know nothing. Yes there are giant cuttlefish in the mausoleum. Yes that is a danger and a potential tax on their HP. I do recommend reading to them the giant description out loud at her grave, and read especially out loud the phrase “If you don’t kill at least one PC with this monster you’re doing it wrong” (paraphrased). 

It is the exact same with the witch. It is the exact same with the golems. It is the exact same for the first (dam) dungeon. All danger is telegraphed. This is why the lethality of DCO feels fair. It’s why I spoke twice about spoilers: you’ve had fair warning. 

A lot of people complain about the OSR or NuSR or whatever-we’re-calling-ourselves these-days as too lethal. I think this is a fault of either poor writing in the adventurers with instant death not appropriately telegraphed, or potentially players not picking up on the clues. A lot of chaos gremlin types wanna fuck around but cry when it’s time to find out. You shouldn’t just be vaporized for touching a random statue. But maybe you shouldn’t be surprised if you’re vaporized for licking a statue of an evil frog-demon the cleric gets bad vibes from? 

In addition, modern D&D character creation takes so long and is enough of a strategic sub-game that it disincentivizes character death. It simply takes too damned long to make a character at level one, and there’s too many options and too much tactical or mechanical acumen required to make a character. So much so that some players view character building as their favorite part of the game, like a deck-building card game. And that’s fine, I do believe there is no wrong way to play, but for  the majority of players, other aspects of the game are “The Fun Part.” And I feel that way as a heavy 3.5 player, where templates and weird-builds roamed free like dinosaurs at a theme-park. Taking an hour break minimum due to character death isn’t fun, especially when your friends are looting your character’s corpse or holding their funeral, you wanna be present for that. 

Combine those two parts, a lack of telegraphing/picking up of clues and a ton of work, and you can see why death saves and spare the dying and stabilize and negative hitpoints etc etc ad Infinitum. 

Telegraphing danger isn’t that hard: murder an NPC, a torchbearer, the party’s pet goblin (if you’re allowing that kinda thing). Prophetic messages, graffiti, weird local legends, any of these things work to let the players know this monster is Serious Business Trademark Copyright All Rights Reserved. This is literally rule number one of my gaming style: root for your players, and be on their side. They are the Heroes of the world you’re making together. That being said, you’re the referee- you have to be fair. A neutral arbiter of the rules, as much as you can be. 

So now that we have telegraphed our danger, how do we handle using our lethal opponents? 

We give no quarter and show no mercy. We grow strong from player tears and we stand atop ruined character sheets like a mountain we’ve carved with our own hands. Rule number two of my style is simple: 

In order for the gold and the glory to be real the danger has to be real. 

The Crows are a rival group of adventurers. When has a party of adventurers ever shows kindness or mercy to enemies? Especially human enemies? Very rarely, I would wager. Their tactical acumen and precision should be that of a high functioning party of PCs. They do know what player characters would know: the one in the robes is a mage. The one with the religious iconography is the priest, and the one in armor is the fighter. Everyone else is likely a thief and they’re all greedy bastards (no matter the class). They do not split the party. They sleep in watches (if they sleep). They discuss plans ahead of time and know that wizards lose spells if they don’t get a decent rest. They harass and harry. It’s probing for weaknesses in hit-and-run tactics. These are skirmisher guerillas. Use them that way. They will not seek a fair fight, they know better. These are not noble warriors: these are serial killers. 

Most of this is outlined in the book as to what they know and what they do. They have a whole list of tactics and tricks to use. Many of which are excellent. Choose from them. Use your favorites. Make your party adapt. 

Ghar is a sniper, have him snipe. The best bet is to have him fire from a distance one or two shots during an initial probing attack by zombies during the party’s first rest in act 2. Use one of his poisons on one of the party members. You can roll randomly or you can choose if they’ve seen the party interact with The Eagles. My personal favorite is the Mirror one. It’s best for Knowledge. This is the key to using them. The one that’s anti-wizard is best reserved for a fight or direct confrontation, otherwise use the hallucinogen or corpse one. 

Zoloushka is a glass cannon or a walking demigod (thanks, players, for choosing Shadowdark instead of OSE, all these extra spells are choice). She also is a metric of how awful things are. Every time a player kills a human, add it to her roster of zombies. Mostly she’s a tool-box. She’s there to read player’s minds and be a vector for the staff mostly. Should players be foolish, she has one spell for escape (unless your system lets you keep casting), and one to say “oh shit” as a self defense. 

The zombies are chaff. And if a cleric is present and uses Turn Undead they will see it in the initial attack and remember that. The Crows know the adage of Shadowrun “Geek the Mage First” and then they hit the cleric, then the fighter, then thieves. Hirelings are like rats: aren’t a problem and will abandon sinking ships. They can reassess this motto and change tactics mid fight if things go wrong. 

The Twins are a powerful duo, and should fight as such. Small unit tactics within small unit tactics. 

Holloch is a front-line fighter, and is a duelist not a warrior: he and his sister will try to isolate someone for him to rush in and pick-off. Echo will work in tandem with her brother and sneak-attack and use poison on anyone he’s fighting. He will open with bolas to tangle/knock prone anyone before attacking them. If your system uses measurements and feet, he knows those numbers and takes action to stay out of ranged combat. She will use Kusarigama to tangle/disarm anyone he is fighting. It should be two on one. It should feel unfair. Real fights with multiple opponents vs a single defender are unfair. 

Echo is a face-woman, manipulator, and strategist. She knows you don’t trust her, and that’s good. If your system allows it, you cannot make intuition checks against her. She has all those hidden knives on her, nobody can find all of them on a search check if she’s captured. She’ll approach the party, or a weak-looking member in private. The twins know of one treasure, it stands to reason know about another. They’ll promise to trade one for another if the party just lets them arrive first (the party should not do this). If your party is foolish enough to sleep without a watch twice, on the second time she will poison their food with the opium she has. The Crows will then murder the party without saves while they are drugged. Better to eliminate the threat than let it ride. Do not gamify this: no rolls to hit, no damage. They put hands over mouths and slide daggers under ribs, or take axes to foreheads. 

If you have a huge party like my second time running this (during the pandemic, up to 13 rotating players with 8+ a session) you should consider using Mork Borg’s scumbirther website to make two more Crows. I think a heretic cleric and a nasty berserker type are a good idea. Even the odds of you need to. Treat these extra two as disposable, a heal packet and a cruise missile. 

In act two is most likely the place to have their initial probing attack. Likely a wave of (double the party’s number in) zombies. Snipe one character with Ghar during this. Read the Crows entry out loud if the party survives. Telegraph the danger again. Make them aware. Remember they get no spells or HP from losing a rest. 

Act two is also where I would use the tactics listed in the book. There are stellar places for many of them, and all of them are fantastic and terrifying. The one with zombie and the rope moving upstream is a favorite of mine. As is luring a big fuck-Off monster like one of the golems or the platypus to them. I like using the graveyard/mausoleum and the mill as ambush spots. 

I really can’t stress enough how much you should read the timeline in the back of the book going forward, and keeping strict records of time from this point on. Acts two and four are likely the most prime places to encounter the crows at full strength. And many… complications arise as either the party or they make it to act 5 and the Observatory proper first. To say the least of other complications and major actors that have arisen this far in the adventure (pray your party has not been foolish). The Crows will not seek direct conflict with the party. If the party sets up a trap, they will skip it and seek the Observatory or set up their own counter-trap. The only bait that would work is if Echo is captured by the party, as Holloch is loyal to her alone, as she him. 

If The Crows either hit the Observatory first or make it in shortly after the party, their goal will be to hunt the treasure first. They flee from the Giant. They also do not know about it but have level heads on their shoulders. Either scenario is bad for the party, unless The Crows have been weakened or it’s been long enough that their numbers have dwindled in accordance with the timeline. Echo and Holloch both have those damned cursed items that let them see in the dark, but put them on a timer. It’s how they are gonna get what they’re after. They still have to kill at least one person. Your party has extra. They can see in the dark, have them attack light sources first.

If things have gone right, or wrong, this is the time that they’ll confront the party. Maybe they meet in the same room. Maybe they take different paths. If you have this adventure, you know what The Crows want. You can read the adventure and see what happens if they get it.  If your players aren’t terrified out of their minds, this will be the time to strike. Encourage them, gently, but be real. Be on their side, for whatever they choose. 

This is all a longwinded way to say that NPCs should have approximate knowledge to their role in the world: goblins don’t know shit, gongfarmers only know shit, tavern keepers know a rumor or two, and rival adventurers know how to play D&D as expert tacticians. 

The Crows are a damned fine example of this. And they aren’t without weaknesses: they have no cleric. They must rest and eat food. Ghar can’t swim in deep water or move quickly. Zoulushka is disloyal and broken mentally from shame and addiction. The Twins are only truly loyal to Each Other. One Turn Undead ruins the zombies. Most of their best magical items are cursed. Intrepid players may destroy their boats. They probably tie the boats together and let the zombies act as lookouts. The same tactics they use can be used against them, if you have the right bait. There are horrible things that want to eat them too, or claim the same treasure they are after. 

Don’t be scared to be scary. When victory comes to your players, when they overcome the challenge before them, it will taste that much sweeter. A genuine victory earned against genuine foes is a better story to brag about than any player talking about their cool loot or their generous DM-approved extra powers. There is only one of you as referee, and typically more players. You will constantly be on the back foot and be out-gunned. It’s ok to remind the players that you can play this game too. So play it well, and give them a championship game worth remembering. 

Monster Remixes 2: Frost Giants

Not that long at all before I had to choose my second monster to remix, and I chose Frost Giants. Mostly because I had already written a take on my other option, but also because I think that giants and their ilk are ill utilized. Too often they are bags of hit points and don’t present a real challenge or threat beyond “this is gonna take a while”, both in game and in reality. 

In Norse mythology, Frost Giants are one interpretation of Jotunn, a people who are often at odds with the Aesir and Vanir. They are often interpreted as trolls as well, and display a myriad of different skills and abilities. Sometimes they’re respected members of the community, and other times they’re clawed monsters with wicked magic who ride wolves. In D&D, they’re just big skyrim viking barbarians. 

Game mechanic wise, they’re the same as other giants, but smarter, more cultured, with resistance to frost and weakness to fire. They use some armor and stereotypical macho swedaboo barbarian weapons. Not a lot to work with, but enough. These guys are bricks and bruisers, and meant to soak up damage and dish it out in kind, capable of being villains with personality. By comparison, Hill Giants are the school bully who shoved you into a locker as a stereotype: big, dumber than the rocks he throws, and gross. A giant blob of flesh and farts with brute force and a low intellect meat-mind to vaguely pilot it. Frost giants are not that. They are tacitly abusive brutalists. Melee combatants meant to be equal to our stalwart fighters, capable of tactics. 

The obvious Appendix N inspiration for them is clearly “The Frost-Giant’s Daughter”, by Robert E. Howard. A shorter tale of Conan of Cimmeria, where he encounters a slightly more mythical and trollish jotunn in the form of Atali, and two of her brothers which fall much more in-line with the monster-manual default Frost-Giant. Both warrior-kin are quickly dispatched by the Cimmerian, as he falls prey to the magical lure of the winter-maiden. 

In basic 5e they’re effectively trailer-pagan wet dreams: giant blue-skinned horned helm lamellar clad axe-wielders with a nasty disposition. They’re cruel, bad-guys in fur cloaks, the Norse as ravaging pillagers and marauders, the heel-turn and villain-arc of all LARPers with side shaves and guyliner and beaded beards and Mjolnir pendants. A goofy chariacture of medieval Norse stereotypes cranked to 11 that would border on offensive if not for its semi-celebratory nature and dated inspiration. And that gives me an idea: we stay in the same genre, but switch sub-genres. We ditch the Amon Amarth and Wardruna for other artists.

Frost-Giants are Black Fucking Metal. 

***

Frost-Giants, Ymir’s Blood, Rimeserkers, Sons of Ice and Darkness, Black-Marked Raiders

Along the shores of the northernmost climes of the world, massive ships land on their beaches. Dragon headed longboats cobbled together from something like ribs and tusks, or fantastically large toenails, beached like invading wyrms. Hallmarks of raiders from across cold strange waters. And in the mountains, where the air grows thin and the hoarfrost clings to beards and armor like a stiffened corpse, tiered halls of blackened wood and knot-work carved stone rise from under snowdrifts under the light of wyrdling auroras like ghosts summoned from graves. Feasting halls and plunder hoards of winter’s warrior-kin. 

They rise into the sky, grim and gogmagog-like. Their torsos begin where most men’s heads stop, and their bodies are possessed of a rangey musculature and broad shoulders often seen in those who work oars for hours on end. The titans’ skin is corpse white, with a cyanotic tint. Blackened nails and lips, often with long hair and beards. Their faces are painted in a myriad of monochrome patterns with the ashes and suet of defeated beasts, and their eyes hold a menacing coldness more befitting iceberg crusted seas than living things. Their breath does not fog the air, and they often go shirtless despite the fanged bite of hypothermic winds. Sometimes they wear little but midnight black leather and cobbled armor. What protection they do wear is always adorned with spikes to menace the lesser creatures they’ve come to slay and slave. 

Mighty too are their weapons, forged under psychedelic aurora skies no man has lived to tell about. The rainbow sheen on their steel a hallmark of the bifrost pathways they’ve stridden upon at the behest of their darkling shamans and gothi. The axe and sword, hammer and shield are all known to them. Such is their might to crack stone and split skulls asunder like eggshells. The meat and make of men are like husk-dolls to them, as fragile in our forms to them as icicles are to us. Their training in the warrior arts is superlative. 

While little is known of their home and ways, a few foolish men have done some form of trade with them. What such titanic heralds of frosted midnight could possibly want is still largely unknown. But in the sale of pelts whiter than starlight and mead flavored with divine apples stolen from gods men don’t have names for, tales were told over gallons of ale and whole-roast horse carcasses. Tales told in voices that clawed like sleet in a graveyard, or broke like thunder from glaciers spilling across primordial skies. 

Tales told while the gargantuans drank from skulls.

The giants’ home is sunless, demon and battle filled, and in a state of perpetual winter. This has bred within its people an unending grimness. Half align with old gods and giants of their ancestry, and the other align with the ruinous demons of the pit. It is a place of constant war, and it is the only life they will know till the light takes them. 

Whether fodder for endless war, or for greed of gold and glory, or for cruelty birthed of a blackened world, their longships land on northern shores. Their booted feet crush walls and they raid and take what they can, giving nothing in return. Men stumble into blasted halls during blizzards, to find hearts colder than any ice they’ve ever known swearing fealty to behemoth jarls of sub-arctic mood or shadowed devils of hells best left frozen. Wind-scarred and snow-pale hands will eagerly carve out their mortal hearts for sacrifice to either set of pinprick eyes of cold cruelty. 

Frost-Giant

HP: 45, AC as Chain and Shield, Saves on a 12+, Immune to cold, double damage from fire. 

Attacks: Giant Weapon +4 to hit, 3d6 if single handed or 4d8 if two handed. Add +1 to AC if using a shield. 

Boulder Throw +3 to hit, 3d6 damage and on a crit knocked prone on odd damage or buried under boulder on evens. 

Glacial Might: instead of inflicting full damage, a Frost-Giant may instead do half damage but achieve a mighty deed (similar to DCC’s rule), enabling it to knock a target prone or disarm an opponent, or some other martial feat of incredible strength. They have advantage on all other strength based checks. 

Permafrost Champions: Every 3 rounds of being in close combat range of a Frost-Giant, combatants must Save vs Breath. A failure either moves their initiative to last or adds a level of exhaustion (DM’s choice) due to radiating cold. After 3 consecutive failed saves, enemies are frozen solid. 

Hearts of Blackest Ice: Cold damage heals Frost-Giants

Monster Remixes 1: Barghest

In an effort to write more and generate “content” for my blog, I decided to take a hint from some other blog posts and also my initial writings for this blog (which I haven’t posted), and remix old monsters that need a refresher for D&D. If drastically changed, I’ll include stats, but otherwise it’s assumed you can use the old stat block and powers. Oliver at Graven Utterance and I decided to give each other monsters to remix, and I was given the Barghest. Mostly because I like their official art in older editions.

I traditional D&D, Barghests are demons from Gehenna that are goblin werewargs, with some nasty spells to help them avoid detection, beginning in second edition. In mythology and folklore, barghests are a kind of Black Dog trope, which are in itself a kind of hellhound. So right from the bat I can see why they chose to make them goblins (ties into English Folklore roots) and outsiders (plane or Gehenna) to help distinguish them amongst their peers. 

D&D and sword-dice games have a plethora of dog-monsters: wolves, wargs, winter wolves, werewolves, jackalweres, and a billion other variants. Especially with barghests, they’re a kind of shapechanger (also associated with wolves), and their spells are to avoid detection. They’re pretty powerful, so I see them as nasty hit-and-run tactics bosses from a modern tactical RPG perspective. 

Black Dogs can vary from mythos to mythos, even local areas in English folklore. Only some Black Dogs are Barghests. And so one of our tasks is to distinguish our remix just like the official version. Moreso, when I heard the term I think immediately to the rumor of Winston Churchill having depression he referenced as a Black Dog, and that gives me some ideas. 

***

Barghest, Stygian werewargs, Black Dogs of the Unseelie, Cocytus Baptised Wolves

From which underworld they come we do not know. Scholars and magi who’ve tracked them have gone mad, or worse- torn apart by invisible monsters, hunted back from their trips by black shadows with rictus grins at the corners of their peripheral vision, their powerful minds soured. 

Whip-thin, with bestial eyes and mouths too big for their bodies, and teeth that are all fangs. Some say they look like dogs or baboons, long and loping as they bay after those they chase. Others say they look like wild children with mange, wispy shadow-black hairs dangling lifelessly from moon-pale flesh. Their fingers and limbs gangrel, their ears pointed, and their glee sadist and malevolent. 

The barghests drink up joy and sorrow, feed themselves and sup on the pleasures of life, leaving none for their victims. A victim hounded by a barghest will find that neither drink nor food nor flesh nor any manner of pleasure provides but temporary relief. All in the world has devolved into a black pit, from which there is no escape. Their days will eventually be spent bedridden, and their emotions devolve into a sense of being a hollow shell. The Great Sorrow is ambrosia to the depression-drinker.

But the Barghest knows too well that a clean kill is that of the natural world. And they are far from it. Why kill the cow when you can bleed it? Drop. By. Drop. A Barghest will hardly fully kill a meal in one swoop, but will instead hunt in a wide pattern, performing all manner of cruelties and injustices to the preferred victim. A cousin passed. A lover has an accident. Good news doesn’t arrive (the messenger’s flesh rent and left to rot in the woods). Life’s cruelties are magnified by the unnatural beast, and it relishes every second of it. 

Lonely travelers are a favorite victim. A stroke of the claw like the reaper’s scythe and then they follow the trail of sorrows like a hound after a scent, tongues lapping the earth for traces of tears, licking up the laughter and leaving none for the new victim sitting by the windowsill or the mailbox. 

Invariably it is here, in the lonesome woods and darkling places of the world that adventurers meet the Barghest, or perhaps in some abominable crypt where insane priests have summoned or trapped one to pluck from it the blackest secrets of the netherworld. 

Whom do they serve? Why do they torture so? Who knows. And who cares when one has its fangs at your throat? Some more darker powers in the gloaming world employ barghests in pairs as hunting dogs, black-ops troops in the magical world of things that should-not-be. But never more than two, lest the pack turn on its handler, and then fight amongst themselves for supremacy. 

Barghest

HP: 50, AC as leather and shield, Saves on a 14+, vulnerable to silver and iron

Attacks: Claw/Claw/Bite d6/d6/d8 +2/+2/+3 to hit/dmg, Hitting with all 3 attacks knocks the target down and allows them to be dragged/moved by the Barghest as it fights

Thief-of-Joy: mortals within 100 feet of a Barghest do not receive experience points from treasure found and must save vs magic to end a rest as depression takes hold of them. Carousing in the same building as a Barghest provides no benefit and consumes double resources. 

Spells: At will Invisibility, Dancing lights, ventriloquism, spider climb, pass without trace (or system equivalent)

Everything is A Dungeon If You Try Hard Enough

I was thinking the other day of a failed Shadowrun mini campaign I ran eleven years ago. This in turn got me to thinking of Shadowrun, and how the game (and any cyberpunk game) works. It’s all basically a heist, and that is effectively what a dungeon crawl is. Especially a Megadungeon, where it’s repeated heists in the same place. I could easily see a Shadowrun Megadungeon where, instead of the traditional Fantasy “further down is scarier” it’s a cyberpunk “further up is scarier” megabuilding.

I’m sure someone smarter has had this idea before, but I think that like, you can turn anything into a dungeon. 

And yes, I know some of you may think Shadowrun isn’t the best example of cyberpunk, but invariably I end up putting sci-fi stuff into my fantasy worlds, I think it’s fair to do the same in your science fiction. That’s basically how you get 40k. Or ET. Or Star Wars.  Pick your poison. 

And each of those worlds has a Megadungeon. 40k has Space Hulks, ET has a crawling medical tent, and Star Wars has the Death Star. 

I think my problem, and part of the reason why my Shadowrun game failed was because I wanted my office buildings to make sense. Which is the dumbest idea I had about any RPG at that point in time. 

Have you ever been in an office? They suck. I’ve worked in one. Uncomfortable chairs. Nothing of real monetary value. Most aren’t decorated. Not much different than a factory, occasionally it’s even just humans reduced to soulless automata, and maybe some interesting team building and gossip at the best. Administrative. Bureaucratic. Boring.  

Not making sense is ok, being Gonzo and weird is ok. Why are there fire breathing ghost dogs on level 12 of this skyscraper? Because they’re fucking fun and a good challenge, that’s why. The same reason there are goblin steampunk robots in level 6 of a dungeon someplace, because Doctor Goblenstein and his Creation, Amaze-O the Metal Man are a good idea. That’s something my players haven’t seen before and will have an interesting time with.  Any office could drastically be improved with the addition of kobolds designed to keep intruders from the snack room without the right password, or vengeful assassins looking to strangle you with a clip-on tie. 

The best part is, that to the workers of this office, that’s just Eric and Jeff, from Security and Accounting. The kobold and assassin are normal, or close enough, for them. 

I think that being more Gonzo is good for RPGs as a game. While yes, we want to make believable worlds, we still have to ask “is this room/scene important to the world/game?” Nobody is upset that Mario doesn’t take a break from stomping goombas to take a dump, and no one wants to watch Simon Belmont pay his water bill and make a grocery list. That isn’t what those games are about, and similarly I don’t think we should get wrapped up in the details as to like, why dungeons don’t all have toilets. That isn’t what D&D is about. 

The Cult of The No-Eyed God

The No-Eyed God is the god of Insomnia, Undeath, Cannibalism, Torture, and Willful Ignorance. He was a sorcerer-king, and has ruled for eons. So much so that the chiefliest of his servants are buried in their own tombs, and his own corporeal body given way to lichdom. 

He is the wellspring from which the undead flow, and was creator of each in their own perverse design. 

From willing corporeal followers he found new ways to give them strength and let them cheat the reaper’s scythe by convincing them blood was wine and the flesh of their brothers food to sustain themselves. He had to tell no lies to do so, they were able to trick themselves into the consumptive cycle. The thirst and the hunger is all they know now.

And from victims he found new ways to torture them beyond the grave, snatching bits of their soul-stuff and letting them be consumed by their own extremes. He replayed their pains to them over and over before they could cross to the other side. They chose to stay back themselves, untethered from the physical world. The pain and hate is all they know now.

The dead won’t rest if he has his way.

For Undeath is Insomnia, and Insomnia is Undeath. They are the same. You sample the living dead when you do not sleep well, and the reason is the dead envy your ability to dream. They kill you not because you need to die, but because they’re so jealous they must kill. 

His cults subversively spread his teachings by masquerading sinisterly as other faiths. “The Church of the Feast”, “The Blind Faith”, “The Child Looking Away”, “The Order of Eternal Vitality”. All lies, and at their deepest circle of trust they carve the meat from the still screaming victims and lap the blood from the table, thankful for the splinters in their tongues and the pain and rot it will produce. They prey on the needful, the hurting, and the ignorant. Their pilgrimage leads to open graves, and horrifying falsehoods they embrace like lovers. 

His lesser priests willingly undergo ritual torture, so much so they become akin to medical waste cenobites- idiot sadists with scabs and clots of someone they once cared about between their teeth. Some remove their eyelids to prevent sleep. Greater priests have no need of senses, craving to be closer to their god, needles are driven into their eyes, their mouths sewn shut, and hot lead poured into their ears. Still they preach his unholy truths: there is another, Darker world just on the other side. You only have to look the right way.

They wear his holy symbol openly: a skull without eye sockets, fangs instead of teeth, often made of razors or broken glass to cut the user.

Some volunteer for living sainthood, undergoing repeated sleep-fasts, until they are placed in a coma, or repeatedly lobotomized, sometimes by their own hand. Often afterwards they are slowly, slowly eaten by their friends and fellows.

Many times these deeper worship practices create ghouls, the lowliest of undead troops, carrying their disease as a “blessing” to the world. Sometimes though, a much more foul undead mentor will spread its taint in a growing subversive cult, a vampire, a wight, or some fouler thing not yet seen. Like locusts they consume, and like infection they spread. 

Behind all this, is a deeper obsession: to carry out not just his will of a stygian world of undying monsters, but to speed the coming of the will of The Dark to the world, to see this world and all others subsumed into the cold infinite, and bring it insidiously closer to the No-Thing.

The Demons of Infernal Geometry

Chief amongst the servants of the unknowable Outer Dark are the Demons of Infernal Geometry. Sometimes summoned in their lesser form by those who seek to plumb the knowledge the forbidden coldness of beyond the known. Always they take the form of shapes: beautiful, perfect, shapes. Shapes so perfect they are at odds with reality. The imperfection of their very temporary flesh limbs marks it all the worse.

Their flat surfaces are gaping holes to other realities, slabs of cosmos and gateway portals to hells best left unimagined by men, and sweetly dreamed of by the dying gods of cruelties left unspoken. Their curved surfaces the sine wave perfection of vector graphics made for maddening torture by death cult poets. Their greatest incarnations are topographical maps of infernal Bosch paintings spun into psychedelic mandalas of abandoned, sunless worlds- biblical angels inversed.

They see without eyes, and speak your name like a parent. It does not feel good. 

If their eyes do open, they open in fractal time loops, seeing across realities the same way that the eye-tyrants do. Maybe they learned it from them. Maybe they taught each other. Maybe they stole it. They are stealing from you now, now that their gaze is upon you. Their Eye is the  one that Sings the polyrhythmic hymn of the universe’s horrific birth and the blissful pride of its unifying heat death. 

The song is an attack, a disintegration ray on a temporal level. Your parts are being erased from time on a molecular level. There is no physical pain, but the spiritual pain is agony unreal by the world’s standards until you felt it. Your body is a tape deck having its ribbon pulled out between two high-powered magnets, and it knows this. If data is beautiful, then these creatures are the alphanumerical song of your death, your ancestor’s death, and joy of your world’s unmaking. They sing together in a choir. You came from nothing, and the numbers are cleanest if unto nothing you return. It is a soldier of the blackest truth, the calculator of darkest equation. Because in the beginning there was The No-Thing.

And that’s how it liked it.

Lesser Demon of Infernal Geometry

HP: 30, AC as chain, saves on a 13+

Temporal Disintegration: +3 to hit, does 3x the number of party members damage. 

Choir: if 3 or more lesser demons of infernal geometry sing the temporal disintegration together, triple that damage, and apply 10x that number as damage to their XP

Middling Demon of Infernal Geometry

HP: 60, AC as plate, Saves on a 11+

Temporal Disintegration: +6 to hit, does 6x the number of party members in damage. 

Choir: if 6 or more middling demons of infernal geometry sing the temporal disintegration together, deal d6 damage to a random ability score of each party member, and apply 10x that total number as damage to their XP.

Greater Demon Of Infernal Geometry

HP: 80, AC as enchanted plate and shield, saves on a 8+

Choir Master: Greater Demons of Infernal Geometry make Middling and Lesser Demons count as Choirs, and can summon one extra demon of infernal geometry as their action for a turn

Temporal Rearrangement: every time a player goes in combat, roll a d8, on an 8, a Greater Demon of Infernal Geometry may use one of that player’s abilities against another player or monster.

Temporal Disintegration: +8 to hit, does 8x the party’s total level in damage to their XP, in addition roll a d8, on a 1-4 erase notes from your campaign world, on a 5-8 eliminate a magic item in the party at random. 

Weapon Variance in OSE and other Retroclones

One of my big pickles with OSE and D&D as a whole is the consistent optimization of weapon choices. In 5e, it’s obvious that a great sword is better than a great axe, because of the higher average damage and minimum damage of two dice instead of one. Let alone what happens when you begin taking feats and class abilities that let you re-roll those dice. In OSE, a two-handed sword is a d10 where a battle axe is just a d8, despite both being two handed weapons, and the axe having the slow category (if you use weapon speeds).   As a fighter, I can choose a sword (d8) and a shield (+1 ac) and truck along faster in combat with better defense than a battle axe user. 

But battle axes and great axes are fucking cool. Kull uses an axe, and lots of sword and sorcery imagery has our mighty-thewed warrior using a hulking labrys, or a weighty headsman’s axe. 

Warhammers and maces share with the same problem, in my humble opinion. They’re both blunt d6, but nothing separates the two. Players will universally choose the longbow’s longer range over the short bow, despite it being the weapon of choice for mobile archers on horseback (not that historial accuracy or such should be attempted by the game). 

My big problem here is that I want both tactical variance and also diegetic difference between those options for weapons in my own homebrew. The problem here is that, I also don’t want to say x weapon does y effect cause that implies that only x weapon can do y, especially when really I want to use and encourage Mighty Deeds like in DCC. 

An easy cop-out is to return to the “all weapons do d6 damage” but I feel like the barbarian from and with the eponymous Golden Axe should hit harder than a halfling with a cheese knife. 

I think the solution to the problem is likely in the critical hits like in 3rd edition. Having some kind of extra effect that might be diegetic or non-diegetic I think is smart, and adds some tactical variance. I think also limiting it to say, once a combat or an opponent might be a good idea. 

I don’t really know where to go from here, but it gives me an excuse to rewrite and use different weapons in OSE. 

Swords - Vein Opener, once per room on a critical hit, instead of max damage and roll again, roll the creatures total hit dice and subtract that much damage.

Axes - Flesh Splitter, once per room on a critical hit, roll your damage die and add it to twice your max damage

Maces - Skull Cracker, once per room on a critical hit do your weapon’s damage die to an opponent’s intelligence in addition to critical damage.

Hammers - Bone Breaker, once per room on a critical hit, do your weapon’s damage die against an opponent’s constitution in addition to critical damage

Spears - Impaler, once per room on critical hit, in addition to damage, that creature or a part of that creature is pinned to the ground or wall, preventing it from moving or using that part of it’s body.

Knives - Shiv, Thieves my always hide 1 knife per level on their person, and can with sufficient Roleplay always get access to a small knife if they are ever without one.

I don’t think this is a perfect solution, as I think you should be able to stab through a gnoll’s foot into the ground and pin them their with your sword, and smash a gladiator’s teeth out with a shield, but it does give some better tacticool options for choosing one weapon versus the other.