Tuesday, 27 January 2026

STRANGE AEONS - LIMA

 Alright I'm doing this and the next one and then I'm going to stop.

Poetess Magda Portal is secret agent for revolutionary party. Sits in corner of Lima's top expat bar. Needs your help. You fight royal Inca mummies, space portals at Machu Picchu, the Thing from Planet X.

I like Peru and Peruvian things. I went pretty deep on Peru here. Interesting country. Baroque. Full of eccentrics. One of the oldest universities in the Americas. Hugely geographically diverse in a way that makes it easy to envision an all-Peru campaign. Every "South American thing" represented. Kind of a secret second Mexico as well - if you like the idea of gunfights and high desert banditos. Atacama Desert has to be one of the most extraterrestrial landscapes on earth.

Monday, 27 October 2025

STRANGE AEONS - SYDNEY

 It turns out the last one was actually not the final set of Strange Aeons adventures, at all.

The inestimable Dr. Crabbe. Curator of Palaeontology at the Australian Museum. Secretly a Yithian. Needs your help to fight the time war. Balmoral Theosophists. Sea monster on rampage in Hobart - murdering veterans of Antarctic expedition.

Here's me on Bluesky again, I'm going to keep linking to it. And here on itch.io is where you can download the whole thing as a book.


Last part of my occult treasure list. Check it out once more.

  1. Eye Of Kanaloa. Chunk of dark matter formed during the Big Bang. Brought to Hawaii from the Pleiades by the octopus priest Pa’ao. Sculpted into a snarling totem. Temple built around it. Nobody who touches it can move more than twenty feet away from it until they offer it a chunk of human flesh.
  2. Philadelphia Gargantua. Skull of a tusked ogre captured in the Alleghenies by John Savage in 1736. Constantly trying to regrow its flesh. Must be submerged in a tub of weak acid at all times. Briefly owned by Benjamin Franklin, who as an experiment let it return to life and attempted to train it as a lawyer.
  3. Rattlebag. Pouch of wendigo teeth collected by the Cree shaman Jack Fiddler. Taken from his body by a Mountie after he was hanged at Norway House. Represses cannibalism taboos - as long as you’re shaking it, nobody in earshot will hesitate to consume human flesh.
  4. Setebos. A Patagonian deity, once worshipped by giants. Killed by Magellan’s sailors in his Tierra del Fuego shrine. Pickled in brine and carried back to Venice by Antonio Pigafetta. Sold to the Knights of Rhodes. Resembles a fat mutant prawn with a single bulging eye. Worship him for divine favours.
  5. Desiccated Salp. Dried plasticky mass like wadded cellophane. Clings to your fingers when you touch it. Expands on contact with sufficient water into a translucent oozooid the size of a barn. Taken in 1920 by HM Coastguard from a half-mad Scottish herring fisherman, found adrift on the North Sea.
  6. Ice Weasel. Foot-long mustelid from the island of Tsalal in the Weddell Sea. White fur. Scarlet bones and claws. Relentlessly scratches at the planks of its wooden crate. If released, will capture and devour all black objects and creatures it can find. Abandoned in Chicago by the Crow Indian sailor Dirk Peters in 1838.
  7. Green Lens. Palm-sized disc of viridian glass. Found by Ernest Shackleton in a stone hut on the banks of the Onyx River in the McMurdo Dry Valleys in 1902. Any light that passes through it becomes poisonous, inflicting cyanide symptoms in proportion with its brightness.
  8. Osiris Hedron. Serpentinite die from Ptolemaic Egypt. Each of its twenty faces is inscribed with a god’s Demotic symbol. Roll the die at dawn to learn which god’s influence governs the coming day. Found in Dakhla Oasis. Used by the Renaissance polymath Gerolamo Cardano to cheat at chess.
  9. Canard Explosif. An experimental self-guided aerial torpedo, designed by Jacques de Vaucanson and substantially improved upon by Vannevar Bush for the Raytheon Manufacturing Company. Looks like a wooden duck. Must be carefully trained. Liable to misunderstand verbal commands.
  10. Dagon Tiki. Hand-sized translucent jade pendant shaped like a hungry fish. Purchased by a Fiordland sealer at Preservation Inlet in 1823. Inherited by the captain of the HMS Auckland, which went down with all hands at the Battle of Jutland. Said to summon angels to rescue drowning men.
  11. Bottled Cloud. Vacuum flask of purple gas extracted from a vent in the Danakil Depression. Labelled with Serpent Man glyphs. Inhaling the gas causes hominids to rapidly evolve in unpredictable directions - eliminating hair, massively expanding brain size, bloating torsos and elongating limbs.
  12. Vermiscope. Complicated arrangement of lenses inside a long orichalcum tube. Taken from a Yithian archive in the New Guinea highlands by the Australian gold prospector “Shark-Eye” Park. Lets you see the ethereal tapeworms attached to the chakras of various authority figures.
  13. Illyrian Ancilla. Green-skinned woman from the vicinity of Betelguese. Sold by space pirates to Queen Teuta around 230 BC. Served as a handmaid in the court of Diocletian and the Republic of Ragusa. Polite. Requires minimal food. Will one day resurrect and torture everyone who has ever enslaved her.
  14. Homunculus Wine. Glass samovar of ancient liquor taken from a stone burial jar on the Xiangkhoang Plateau. Pale, sullen, red-eyed embryonic creature floats inside. Drinking the wine lets the embryo control your body - it despises all life and will act intelligently to kill everything it sees.
  15. Arbor Infelix. Potted black acacia found growing in a meteor crater on the Nullarbor Plain. Wants to prick you with its thorns and inject you with cryptic visions of a chthonic deity slumbering under the Gibson Desert. Will grow thirty feet tall if replanted in fertile soil.
  16. Salamander. Igneous slug from Mount Nyiragongo. Curious. Burns anything it touches. Mouths froth with yellow sulphur. Hermit-crab shell of leaded glass. Babbles in high-pitched French. Born in Loki Patera - immigrated as a second-instar larva to the Ionian colonies on Earth.
  17. Wonderland Hat. Silken top hat once owned by John Maskelyne. Portal to the complex plane. Can produce one random object per day, including eggs, cakes, dodos, roses, playing cards, white rabbits, lost children, other hats. Whimsical. Never quite gives you what you want.
  18. Space Cash. Moss-encrusted basalt disk from the ruins of Nan Madol. Marked with an intricate hexagonal pattern. Used as money in the bazaars of Orion - the extraterrestrial equivalent of a hundred-dollar bill. Aliens will seek you out and offer you trinkets in exchange for it.
  19. Crawling Midas. Translucent bruise-coloured ooze trapped in a Mason jar. Converts any living thing it engulfs to gold. Somehow extracts energy from this process. Grows larger when fed. Always hungry. Initial coin-sized blob purchased from warrior women on the Rio Negro by Francisco de Orellano in 1542.
  20. Stepped Reckoner. Calculating machine built by Archimedes in the 3rd century BC. Attached via dimensional folds to an arbitrarily large universe of gears, more or less replicating the function of an early 21st-century neural network. Articulated bronze skull responds to natural-language queries about Greek science secrets.

Tuesday, 19 August 2025

STRANGE AEONS - SHANGHAI

 The final set of Strange Aeons adventures, at least for now.

An alchemist’s shop in the Old City of Shanghai. Uncle Ho wants to create the Pill of Immortality. In constant need of obscure reagents, strange chemicals, occult devices from all corners of the globe. You can help him out. A mysterious drug known as Five Minerals Powder is loose on the Shanghai streets - run by Big-Eared Du, China's Al Capone, from the Great World Amusement Arcade.

And here's me on Bluesky one more time.


The fourth part of my occult treasure list. Check it out.
  1. Sad Jenny. Mummified skate in a bottle, cut to resemble an imp. Looks unhappy. Can absorb one tragic event in the life of its owner - preventing e.g. the death of a child and taking the burden of grief onto itself. Made in job lots by sailors in 16th-century Antwerp - few remain intact.
  2. Vanuatu Ningyo. Preserved corpse of an ape-faced mer-beast with the lower body of a coral trout. Experts reluctant to concede its authenticity - only careful dissection proves it’s not a taxidermied fake. Bought in Ambrym by Japanese sailors in 1822. Sold by a Yankee whaling captain to P. T. Barnum in 1841.
  3. Red Redeemer. Winchester Model 1873 lever-action rifle. Custom-made for Sarah Winchester by a Snake Indian gunsmith from sequoia heartwood. Blessed by the Modoc war witch Curley Doctor and the shamans of nineteen other tribes. Used by Teddy Roosevelt on his 1913 expedition to the River of Doubt. Can kill ghosts.
  4. Yukon Pippin. Golden apple purchased by the Russian anthropologist Vladimir Bogoraz from a Dawson City dance hall girl in 1901 - thought by him to be evidence that the ruined Garden of Eden lay somewhere under the Klondike hills. Eating it cures wounds and opens your mind to uncomfortable revelations.
  5. Piece Of Eight. 16th-century silver dollar, minted in Bohemia by Count Hieronymus Schlick. Given as a tip by J. P. Morgan to a waiter at the Jekyll Island Clubhouse, in payment for his silence about what he saw on the night of the founding of the Federal Reserve. Spend it and it will return to you by circuitous means.
  6. Hopcoat. Waistcoat made from virgins’ skin. Won from a Huilliche witch in a card game by the navigator and warlock José de Moradela, in the Chilote Archipelago in 1793. Can temporarily weaken the influence of gravity on the user, enabling long-distance moon jumps for one minute per day.
  7. Gemini Cell. Coconut-sized human ovum. Squishy but tough, like a ball of clotted clay. Looted in 978 from the treasure chamber of Theodosius the Sorrowed, King of the Abkhazians, who bought it from the morlocks of Krubera Cave. Inject it with sperm - it grows over a month into a perfect duplicate of the donor.
  8. Cetus Lure. Type of orichalcum fish hook found every hundred years or so by peasants trawling the Guadalquivir marshes. Made in old Tartessos out of ingots taken from the walls of the Temple of Poseidon in Atlantis. Liable to catch strange fish - bulging eyes, tendrils, thumb-sized homunculi meditating in their bellies.
  9. Capet Vertumnus. Eroded marble head. Roots sprout from ears and mouth. Discovered by the Renaissance architect Antonio da Sangello during the excavation of an Etruscan tomb in Orvieto. Given to the Pope. If planted, grows into a gnarled tree that women find strangely attractive - might lure a dryad.
  10. Omphalos. The Black Stone of the Kaaba, stolen by Qarmatians in 930 and replaced by a fake. Exact mathematical centre of creation. Will destroy the universe if shattered. Universe then reconstructed by parties unknown, just like it was before, except for a few trivial details like the colour of people’s hair.
  11. Pole God. Ithyphallic idol from a Thuringian sacrificial bog. Made from a forked stick. Screaming bearded head on top. Attracts lightning if planted on a hilltop in a storm. Can be used as a pregnancy gun once charged - fires purple bolts from its penis that implant hungry embryos in the bodies of targets.
  12. Serpent Urn. Clay jar full of king cobras. Cobras can be lured out with live mice at a rate of 1/day. Smashing the jar releases 100 cobras. Brought to the port of Ophir by King Solomon in ~950 BC. Stored in Padmanabhaswamy Temple’s Vault B until 1791, when Dharma Raja of Travancore used it to pay a gambling debt.
  13. Pompeii Yakshi. Ivory figurine of a nude woman with cartoonishly large breasts. Made in Gandhara around 33 AD. Found in the ruins of a Pompeii brothel. Steals the souls of babies as soon as they’re conceived - you can’t get pregnant as long as it’s watching you have sex.
  14. Purgatorius Ignis. Bronze goblet of permanently smouldering embers. Carried out of St Patrick’s Purgatory in County Donegal by the Irish knight Owain around 1140. Can be used to start cleansing fires that burn away the dross of the material world, leaving behind gold-flecked ash and birdlike Heaven-bound souls.
  15. Trench Club. Blackthorn shillelagh filled with lead, rubbed with whale oil and darkened with magpie blood. Crafted for the warrior maid Scathach by the leprechaun Naggeneen. Wielded at Ypres by an officer of the Irish Guards. Induces long-lasting sleep in those whose heads it bonks. Cannot kill.
  16. Truth Mud. Lump of clay from the torso of the Golem of Prague. Single Hebrew letter carved in it. Will come to life when nobody’s looking and set out to destroy the enemies of the Jews. Oozes around slowly. Suffocates antisemites in their sleep. Needs more good clay to increase its mass.
  17. Sound Grenade. Explosive crystal designed for underground warfare. Only works in enclosed spaces. Sonic pulses inflict fatal brain bleeds on everything within its blast radius. Sparkles in sunlight - would make a pretty necklace. Found by the enslaved explorer Stephen Bishop in Mammoth Cave in 1841.
  18. Wife Pod. Cut from a nariphon tree in the Phetchabun Mountains. Made from tough green cellulose. Contains a boneless woman, covered with goo and curled into a ball. Anime-girl personality - cute, affectionate, loves to sing and dance. Only speaks bird language. Anyone who kisses her loses their magic powers for a month.
  19. God Collar. Bronze torc from Iron Age Estonia. Lets the wearer sniff out demons - they reek of sour milk. For every week you go without eating a demon you become more lupine - sharp teeth, pointed ears, eventual full transfiguration into a wolf of Hell. Preserved in a castle vault on Saaremaa by the Teutonic Order.
  20. Crawling Baby. Japanese hoko doll, made from white silk and stuffed with human hair. Protects children from misfortune. Gets bloated and heavy as it absorbs bad luck. If squeezed, will vomit a black goo which evaporates into a cloud of evil spirits that enter the nearest human body through the nose and mouth.

Sunday, 22 June 2025

HIGHLAND VICE

Taking a short break from the Strange Aeons stuff to post something completely different.

A long time ago, on this very blog, I wrote a sci-fi cowboy hexcrawl set in the highlands of a terraformed Mars. More recently I went back to this hexcrawl, expanded and updated it, and called it HIGHLAND VICE.

You can now download it from my itch.io page. Progress is being made!


Earth is polluted anarchy. The Solar System has been colonised. FTL travel remains impossible. Humanity's dreams are mostly dead.

Mars - the ‘fresh start’ planet. Victim of a thousand misjudged terraforming schemes. Failed utopias. Religious fanatics. Mining outposts. Cloned Ice Age monsters. High-altitude cultures - Tibetans, Peruvians - adapted to the cold and the low oxygen levels. Crooks and outlaws hiding out from the Magistrates' Guild.

You are scavengers, tinkerers, entrepreneurs and bounty hunters - the scum of the Inner System. Basically the cast of Cowboy Bebop. A valuable chunk of raw computronium, from the brain of the superintelligence Marduk, is hidden somewhere in the Martian highlands. Your job is to find it.

100 hexes + map. Woolly mammoths. Lost cities. Android anchorites. Satellite shamans. Terror birds. Mountain men. Bad tractors. Gauchos. Monks. Cannibals. Goblin lemurs. Sky bandits. Horseshoe crabs. Hell pigs. Biocosmists. Neanderthal cultists of Tiamat, the Mother Machine.

I wrote the first version of this years ago, before Mothership existed, for a half-baked sci-fi game I was working on back them. More recently I updated and expanded it. Right now it's not designed for use with any particular system. Mothership would be a natural rules fit but do what you want.

Tuesday, 29 April 2025

STRANGE AEONS - CALCUTTA

Another set of Strange Aeons adventures.

Dr. Vikram Sharadindu Chatterjee, the legendary Calcutta detective, is dead. Mysteriously dead. You have to solve all his outstanding cases. No time to lose. The body of a Special Branch detective was recently found at the Nimtala burning ghat - stuffed in a jute sack, burnt alive. Gangsters, naga, creepy monks and parasite-infected Himalayan mountains await. I'm also on Bluesky so check me out there.


Here's another section of my list of occult treasures if that's the kind of thing you like.
  1. Canary Idol. Owl-shaped Guanche cult image found on the Savage Islands by a family of Portuguese slave traders in the late 16th century. Represents the goddess Chaxiraxi, a demon queen worshipped in ancient Carthage. Sends you dreams of the future if you bathe it in a child’s blood.
  2. Camera Nebulosa. Wet-plate camera used by Robert Fenton to shoot Cistercian abbeys and the Crimean War. Requires hour-long exposure times. Sold by Fenton after he abandoned photography in 1862. Gustave le Gray’s experimental chemical process captures spectral entities on film as swirling blue-grey mist.
  3. Lunch Pipe. Long-stemmed Xhosa pipe. Handmade in the 1850s by the cattle-killing prophet Nongqawuse. Enables tobacco to substitute for food. Designed for use by breastfeeding mothers - influences the milk. Taken by Boer police from the Black Hebrew evangelist Enoch Mgijima after the Bulhoek massacre of 1921.
  4. Eternal Flame. Taken from the Great Fire of Adur Gushnap, a Sassanid flame temple at Takht-e Soleymān in West Azerbaijan. Kept in a brass cup by Hulagu Khan. Smells bad to demons. Can’t be extinguished by anything, ever. Will still be burning when the stars go out.
  5. Thunder Casket. Gilded copper reliquary holding three teeth of the Buddha. Found by David Spooner in the ruins of the Kanishka stupa outside Peshawar. Captures and stores lightning - leave it outside in a storm to fire off a thunderbolt at a later date. The Korean pilgrim Hyecho describes its use in war by the White Huns.
  6. Epiphany Bell. Crafted over thirty years from meteoric iron by a Russian Old Believer living in total isolation in the Altai Mountains. Said to create a path to the mythical paradise of Kunlun, across the Weak River and the demon-haunted Moving Sands, when rung in the right spot.
  7. Phallus Magnus. Roman fascinus amulet - winged bronze penis on a chain. Always points to the fattest woman in a hundred-mile radius. Lost in the Sudd by the legionaries of Nero’s White Nile expedition. Dug out of a hippo’s belly, many years later, and used to populate the harem of King Mutesa I.
  8. Chasse-Galerie. Flying canoe purchased from Hell by Quebecois lumberjacks working on the Gatineau River around 1868. Travels 500 km per night. Only works between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day. If you say the Lord’s name or touch a crucifix while using it, the Devil takes your soul.
  9. Star Wax. Ambergris from the gut of a cosmic leviathan. Gathered by Caral-Supe harpoonists in 3000 BC. Pale and greasy. Peanut-sized lump found by a Chinese coolie under ten feet of guano in the Chincha Islands in 1874. Used in delicious perfumes - Coco Chanel’s assassins scour the globe for more.
  10. Titan Cube. Green crystal from Saturn’s rings. Makes people more likely to accept mundane explanations for supernatural phenomena. Given to Galileo as payment for his propaganda on behalf of the Serpent Men. Locally dampens anti-Fortean mind control when smashed - sparks witch hunts, encourages vampire belief.
  11. Snake Clown. Painted wooden Hopi kachina figurine. Leave it alone in a cage with a snake overnight - next morning the snake will be gone and you’ll have good luck all day. Found in a Coconino cave by the astronomer Percival Lowell - used to guide his investigations of the Mars canals.
  12. Greybeard. Salt-glazed stoneware jug filled with mercury, nails, rum and urine. Resembles a bearded man. Abandoned in the Dampier Archipelago by a captain of the Dutch East India Company in the early 1600s. Any vehicle that carries it will eventually crash, wreck or sink.
  13. Pig Dragon Stone. Coiled neolithic jade figure with a vaguely porcine head. Repels cosmic parasites. Owner will slowly become fat, greedy, lazy, stupid and impossible to defeat in single combat. Taken by Chinese Gordon from the Summer Palace ruins and used to manufacture champions for British boxing rings.
  14. Night Ship. Carrack in a bottle. Made by a Lubeck shipwright in 1806. Close study reveals minute insectile figures scurrying through the rigging. Fall asleep holding it - become a captain in the Dreamlands, plying the trade routes between Ulthar and the Moon. Lets you carry dream objects back to the waking world.
  15. Lazarus Mask. Glittering red Venetian carnival mask. Neither age nor disease can kill the man who wears it. Discovered by Mekhitar of Sebaste in the ruins of the leprosarium on Saint Lazarus Island, on the face of a centuries-old Knight of Malta, who fought like a demon to prevent its being removed.
  16. Olifant. Hunting trumpet made from a lunar mammoth’s tusk. Used by the knight Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux. Can summon a legion of extraterrestrial paladins. Requires enough lung-force to pop vessels in the brain - inflicts strokes and aphasia on anyone who blows it.
  17. Taklamakan Ape. Red-furred mummified primate found by Aurel Stein in a Tocharian tomb under the Flaming Mountains on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert. Silk robe and tiny hat. Comes alive at night to steal coins, fruit, small shiny objects - these can be cut out of its bloated stomach.
  18. Devil’s Fiddle. Made by the master luthier Nicola Amati on commission from the Devil in 1666, using upas-tree wood and strings made from the guts of damned sinners. Won in a fiddle contest by an anonymous Georgia hillbilly in 1879. Hungry wolves and spittle-flecked berserkers will stop to hear it played.
  19. Covenant Ark. Chest used by Moses to hold the Tablets of the Law. Brought to Tana Qirqos in 350 AD by Ezana of Axum. New commandments occasionally spawn in it. Kept in a monastery - the basement is full of stone tablets prohibiting kissing and the consumption of fresh bread.
  20. Holy Grail. Brought to Glastonbury Tor by Joseph of Arimathea after Jesus’ death. Lets the drinker return from death, once, by fighting their way free from Annwn - the Welsh underworld, home to red-eyed hounds and mottled serpents. King Arthur is down there, caught in brambles - you can bring him back.

Tuesday, 4 February 2025

STRANGE AEONS - ISTANBUL

The next set of Strange Aeons adventures.

Leo Kazankian, sole owner and proprietor of the Manzikert Hotel in 1920s Istanbul, wants you to help him solve all manner of occult mysteries. But perhaps the greatest mystery... is himself? Basil Zaharoff has stolen the Prophets' Sword from the Topkapi Museum and is auctioning it off in a secret esoteric bazaar in the old Byzantine cisterns, run by eunuch priests. If you liked my old Black Auction posts I hope that you'll like this. And I'm on Bluesky now if that's the kind of thing that floats your boat.


I'm still fleshing out my lists of spellbooks and treasures, as well. Here's some more.

  1. Greenland Spar. Jomsviking navigation crystal. Looted from the Uunartoq fjord settlement by the Victual Brothers in 1428. Found in an abandoned boat shack in the Turku Archipelago. Invisible things can be seen through it. Reveals extra planets when aimed at the night sky.
  2. Ghost Shirt. Made from buckskin by the Paiute prophet Wovoka. Deflects bullets. Worn by Chief Kicking Bear during the Battle of Greasy Grass. Sold by Buffalo Bill to a Glaswegian bank robber in 1891. Uncomfortable. Fits under a long coat. Only works when it’s about to rain.
  3. Catalan Barsoom. Portolan chart of Noachian Mars, showing the coastline of the northern ocean and the spice ports of the Valles Marineris outflow channels. Made in 14th-century Majorca. Green figures in turbans depicted riding insects. Bug-eyed Antichrist crouches atop Olympus Mons.
  4. Glyph Cone. Live venomous sea snail. Shell marked with angular cuneiform - generated by a chemical cellular automaton, devised by Lemurian scientists to preserve their sacred texts. Neurotoxic needle kills in minutes. Specimens routinely found by Queensland divers.
  5. Hockomock Hinkypunk. Cluster of luminescent floating grubs - the souls of Wampanoag shamans. Bottled by a Connecticut trapper during King Philip’s War. Uncorked in a rural area, they fly off in all directions, permanently haunting the vicinity with strange misleading lights.
  6. Taduki. Dried leaves in a hessian pouch. Lets you relive past lives if smoked. Harvested in the Drakensberg by slaves of the Zulu dwarf wizard Zikali. Distributed by Omani traders from Zanzibar and Muscat. Horribly addictive. Use D&D rules for medieval memory adventures.
  7. Paramaribo Judge. Gold vessel found in Suriname by 17th-century Dutch settlers. Traded to the river Caribs by Mansa Muhammad ibn Qu. Djinn inside can fairly settle any dispute, given calculation time and library access. Currently considering the ancient case of Animal v. Man.
  8. Plum Dust. Rosewood box stolen by Hitachi Province fisherman from a hollow metal vessel shaped like an incense burner, discovered on the ocean around 1803. All the box contained was a pink skull made from lacy crystal that dissolved into powder on contact with the air.
  9. Cipher Block. Brick from Solomon’s Temple. Absorbs heat. Hums when left in sunlight. Inscribed in Hebrew with a Name of God. Any building constructed using it will develop rudimentary consciousness, capacity to grow. Taken from foundations of Keziah Brown’s Arkham cottage.
  10. Nosferatu Coffer. Sealed by seven locks, one for each classical planet, requiring a key of the corresponding alchemical metal. Holds the heart of the oldest vampire. Plants die around it. Removed by subterfuge from a Swiss bank vault - the Gnomes of Zurich want it back.
  11. Ottakar. Life-size wooden mannequin. Four feet tall, proportions subtly wrong. Manufactured by a German firm to the exact specifications of the Symbolist painter Odilon Redon. Figures drawn with it as a model tend to resemble the same pallid entity - and move when you look away.
  12. Mist Whistle. Skull-shaped Aztec whistle found in Tlatelolco. Makes a dry shrieking sound and summons an ice-cold mist when blown. Skeletons bathed in the mist get up and dance. Attracts the bones of underground giants - +10% chance to cause an earthquake every time it’s used.
  13. Brain Cylinder. Holds Knud Andersen, bat expert, recently returned from a tour of the crystal cities and fungal forests of the Oort Cloud. Bubbling with excitement - wants to publish his new biological discoveries. Sleeps a lot. Only good things to say about his mi-go hosts.
  14. Lucky Penny. Minted in 2043. Steel. James K. Polk on one side - lightning bolt on the other. Brings good luck in battle to its owner - opponents have a way of tripping over and dealing themselves comically grotesque wounds. Bad luck in all other fields. Can’t be reclaimed once lost.
  15. Slime Helm. Diving helmet full of cold black ooze. Used in an attempt by rich Theosophists to investigate magnetic anomalies detected off New Zealand’s southern coast. Hauled up years later by Chilean fishermen. Ooze can be poured out - there’s always more.
  16. Stopwatch. Made from an abandoned time machine, found by urchins in a Southwark warehouse and dismantled for scrap. Can freeze time for thirty seconds. Usable once a month. Ape-men from the future must destroy it to avert the paradox that ends their species.
  17. Dowsing Pendant. Tiger’s eye pendulum on gold chain. Gives you direct access to the Akashic Records. Charge it up with sunlight and suspend it over a map to see where you’re supposed to go. Destiny of all previous owners - Mughal princess, French aristocrat - has been horrible death.
  18. Thunderclap Bomb. Cast-iron sphere full of gunpowder. Blessed by 888 Taoist priests. Character for “heaven” on the side. Last of a bundle used by Song dynasty warriors at the Siege of Kaifeng. Will level a building and summon a celestial bureaucrat to see what all the noise is about.
  19. Aqua Tofana. Thumb-sized vial of colourless liquid. Makes you fall so deeply in love with the first woman you see that it kills you. Brewed from toads and mercury by the Palermo poisoner Giulia Tofana in 1633. A kiss each day from your inamorata delays your painful death.
  20. Imperial Harpoon. Hurled by the Roman general Belisarius into the flank of the sperm whale Porphyrios, who plagued shipping in the Sea of Marmara during the reign of Justinian I. Retrieved from the beast near Mocha Island in 1838 and hung above the altar in a Nantucket church.

Sunday, 1 December 2024

STRANGE AEONS - NEW ORLEANS

Writing a set of pulp horror adventures based out of New Orleans, set in and around the Gulf of Mexico and the Deep South. Over at my new blog.

You can find all the adventures I've written so far in the Mystery Manual. I did one set of eight based around London. Now I'm doing New Orleans. Coming up is Istanbul and Calcutta. The overall form of these project keeps changing so I'm not locking anything in just yet.

Ultimately this should be sort of a world map of occult adventure, to make it easy to run open-ended sandbox games in the 1920s. Ghost hunters and private detectives uncovering prehistoric mysteries. The world of Weird Tales - Lovecraft meets Indiana Jones.

Here's a sample of what's going on over there, from Servants Of The Worm - the story of an evil carnival in Alabama, built over a gateway to the Hollow Earth.

  • Yorgos Grammatikos, the Illustrated Greek, was taken captive in Siberia by a clan of Chinese Tatars and tattooed from head to toe. Most of his comrades died of infection or shame. The obscenities on his biceps can be seen for a price - the ones on his belly he’ll never show to anyone.
  • Professor Infinitesimal, the World’s Smartest Dwarf, in glasses and a powdered wig, provides daily lectures on the Secrets of the Atom. In his lab there’s a dynamo purchased from the morlocks, and an experimental lightning gun that he is trying to replicate. Omar, the Bethlehem Giant, is his slave.
  • Sad Sack Sal, the Melancholy Clown. Tears painted on his face. Suicide attempts thwarted by his partner, Yellow Joe, who swaps out his cyanide for ink and puts confetti in his gun. Follows you round the carnival, wordlessly begging you to kill him. Sincerely believes most people would be better off dead.
  • Rondo Barbosa, the Mato Grosso Maniac. Trick rider and sharpshooter. Horses are terrified of him and do as he says. Wanted for the murder of three nuns in his native Brazil. Expert with the lasso, the bolas, and the thrown knife. Birds treat him with maximal disrespect - he kills them on sight.
  • Nestor Alfresco, the Upside-Down Man. Geek and contortionist. Rubber bones. Elasticated skin. Can bend himself through a letterbox, given time. Found as a child compressed beneath the floorboards of a Cleveland flophouse, subsisting on dropped food. Hypnotises chickens before eating their heads.


Friday, 18 October 2024

STRANGE AEONS - SPELLS

 I have a new post on my new blog. It's about spells for a Call of Cthulhu type setting. The idea is that every spell should go with a specific book and a specific historical context. Every grimoire is an adventure hook, every spell is a big deal and can drive you mad.


It's built on some stuff I wrote here. But more developed.

The Book of Nun. A collection of Egyptian funerary inscriptions from the thirteenth century BC. Found at only three sites - a hidden chamber of the Osireion at Abydos, a vandalised tomb in the Valley of the Kings and (this is disputed) a sandstone cave on the Central Coast of New South Wales.

Contains advice for the recently dead on how to navigate the watery caves of the underworld and plead one’s case before the Ogdoad, the eight frog-headed gods of primal chaos. Careful study reveals a few rituals of use to the living.

  • Speak With Dead. Get a corpse, so recently deceased that the soul still lingers in the vicinity. Anoint its forehead with sweet oil. The soul is drawn back in for a few moments, to creak out a few parting words, though it’s already forgetting how eyes and lips work. It has more questions for you than you do for it.
  • Black Tongue. Add two dice to all Charisma rolls and speak any language on Earth, though the voice is not your own and you might not understand what you’re saying. Can be used on someone else. Lasts for the space of one conversation. Tongue blackening wears off in a few days.
  • Cavern Slave. Animates a shabti figurine to perform an unpleasant task in your place. The shabti resents this and will constantly try to misinterpret or wriggle out of your commands. Stupid and cunning as your average peasant. Responds better to violence than to reason. Can be commanded “die for me” and forced to absorb a curse or magical judgement in your place.
Check out the rest of them here at strangeaeons.substack.com. The blog was briefly suspended by Substack because of the bad design of their spam filter but hopefully that will not happen again.

Sunday, 22 September 2024

STRANGE AEONS

I keep making new posts on this blog announcing that I'm doing a new project and then not really following through. Bad practice. Embarrassing honestly.

But this time it's real though. I'm now posting over at strangeaeons.substack.com. The idea is to run OSR-style games in the Call of Cthulhu setting.

What does this mean?

OSR design principles - open-ended gameplay, high degree of player freedom, amoral profit-motivated PCs, lateral-thinking problems that test player skill.

Call of Cthulhu - 1920s pulp adventure. Cosmic horror. Prehistoric alien races emerging into the present day. Anything that could plausibly have appeared in Weird Tales. PCs are ghost hunters, private detectives and Indiana Jones.

I have written a whole bunch of adventures already - open-ended occult mysteries. A sandbox for London-based psychic investigators. You can check them out.

Some relevant old posts I did on this blog:

timeline. I wanted to build a coherent world that wasn't quite the Lovecraft mythos but had room for it.

Lovecraft Villains 1 and Lovecraft Villains 2. Villains with a cosmic-horror angle but believable human motivations that make it so you can interact w/ them in a game.

The Black Auction 1, Auction 2, and Auction 3. Probably the best posts I've ever done on here. Notice how the paragraphs get shorter as I get better at writing. Worldbuilding and collectible magic items.

Anomalous Media. Not from the 20s but same basic horror-detective concept.

people you'll meet in cairo and black books. More loose Lovecraft content. Feel like I've been working on this project in the back of my head for years.

Might be more stuff, I don't know, I forget much of what I've put on here. Some of it's good some of it's lame. Anyway I will be endeavouring to post over at strangeaeons.substack.com from now on so check it out and don't forget to like and subscribe. I've also discovered that 1920s photographs are creepy so expect a lot more of those.

Friday, 7 April 2023

substack announcement

 I've been writing short stories and putting them on Substack. It's matthalton.substack.com, it's just my name.

If you like the writing on this blog, you will like the short stories. They are mostly horror stories. They're about fucked up things happening to freaks. 

They're not particularly well organised at this stage.

I think you should start by reading the story Los Encantados. This is my favourite of the ones I've done so far. It's about a sailor who gets into some trouble in the Amazon. It's loosely inspired by the Maqroll stories of Alvaro Mutis. Here is the opening paragraph -

She is waiting for me in the water.

I’ve been sitting in the bar watching the old men play chess and drinking that translucent rum they have here. The old men are using corks as pieces. Nobody’s ever thought to bring a real chess set this far up the river. The rank of each piece is carved into the top of the cork. I’ve seen how deft they are with their knives. Each man here carries a blade the length of his hand in a leather holster at his hip, all the time, even when he’s making love or sleeping. So I’m told.

I based it off something from one of my old Black Auction posts but don't reread that until you've read the story unless you want to be mildly spoiled.

You can also find me on Twitter at @circusarmy if you want to pick a fight with me. I will take on all contenders at all times.

Tuesday, 28 June 2022

black books

 what if I ran a Call of Cthulhu game where the players were rare book collectors in New Orleans

1. Kitab al-Hufra. Book of unorthodox medical techniques from 9th-century Baghdad. Contains instructions for ectopic necromancy, the cultivation and extraction of kidney opals, and returning oneself to a childlike state of fluid consciousness through the practice of autotrepannation.

2. The Chaldean Agriculture. Farming manual from 9th-century Baghdad. Supposedly a translation of a 20,000-year-old Mesopotamian text. 1500 pages, mostly on how to grow crops, mixed with descriptions of Tammuz worship and the pagan rites of ancient Babylon. Mentions a spell for capturing dead souls in clay.

3. Mothallah Fragments. All that remains of an alien library that once orbited the star Mothallah. Secretly compiled by Omar Khayyam from transmissions received at his observatory in Isfahan. Histories of alien civilisations and a frustratingly incomplete recipe for interstellar travel.

4. The Necatrix. Written in medieval Andalusia by Fátima de Madrid as a reply to al-Ghazali’s Destruction of the Philosophers. Proves using pure reason that nothing can or could possibly ever exist. Contains instructions for “escaping history”, using only a wild lion and a labyrinth of mirrors.

5. The Book Of Melchizedek The Mage. 15th-century grimoire about a German Jew who travels to Jerusalem and meets an ancient warlock who teaches him the divine science of immortality, in exchange for his service to a Canaanite god. Summoning rituals in the form of word squares.

6. The Devil And His Dam. Manuscript of a 17th-century play, tentatively attributed to John Webster, in which an aspiring sorcerer sells his soul to the devil only to find that the devil owes its own soul to an even greater power. All known performances have ended with the theatre burning down.

7. De vermibus sub mundo. 17th-century scientific treatise on the nature of life below the Earth. Thought to have been written by the scholar Athanasius Kircher, following his descent into Vesuvius’ crater. Contains reference to a “reptilian empire” that lives in fear of something vast and coiled at the Earth’s core.

8. Le dictionnaire céleste. 19th-century catalogue of angels. Compiled by the occultist Jacques de Plancy shortly before his death, with the aid of an anonymous priest who the text describes only as Père Oeil. Striking illustrations. Officially repudiated by the Roman Catholic Church.

9. Confessions Of A Stowaway. The tale of an Irish opium addict who, carousing one night in Limehouse, climbs inside the hold of a mysterious black ship to fall asleep. He spends seven years sailing the dark oceans of the cosmos before returning to find only a single day has passed.

10. Mantua Codex. Found by detectives in the basement of an Italian aristocrat, shortly after his execution for the crime of nonconsensual immurement. Depicts the worship of the Spider-Faced-Queen-Of-Many-Holes. Likely translated from pre-Mayan texts by scribes of the Howler Monkey God.


i keep thinking about the Tarsioid Psalms and a secret tribe of tarsier men in the Philippines. bulging eyes in the forest at night. slowly unpicking the mosquito net and reaching in through the window with their long hooked tarsier hands


Monday, 13 December 2021

Ends of the World

Edge of the World
  1. The ocean only stands a few meters above the edge of the world. The water turns and falls in a thick band, a unique ecotone home to all manner of specialist marine life. Extremely hydrodynamic fish balance effortlessly atop the waterfall, dipping over the edge if predators threaten, then swimming vertically back to snatch a snack caught in the current.

  2. For the first few miles the waterfall coheres, lensing a view of the world's belly stretching gently away. Diving birds graze across the clear sheet to snatch a startled fish or falling treat. Bolder birds will punch straight through, shake dry and swallow, then dart back across to the sunlit side before their feathers freeze.

  3. A hundred miles below the edge the sun creeps out from the shadow of the world. The warm, wet updraft rising directly below the earth hits the ball of cold air hugging the firmament's umbra. The foggy breeze crosses and breaks the great stream, beginning its transition to a falling wall of foam and mist.

  4. In scattered baubles the water falls, just thicken enough to knock industrious fliers out of the air. It takes a full day of freefalling for water to reach this point. Well evolved eggs, laid by fish at the ocean edge, make take several days to fall this far, but by here they must hatch, while the water is still thicken enough to support their leaping, drop by drop, back to the solid stream.

  5. A thousand miles down the pale disk of the world is lost in cloud. The thread of waterfall above casts spears of sunlight down through the steadily falling haze. This huge stretch of dense, wet, stable atmosphere provides a home for plants and animals that can be very slightly heavier than dry air, yet here remain buoyant.

  6. Impenetrable gray haze above, below and all around. The air grows cold and rain begins to form. The clouds work in on themselves, twisted and tightening. Gentle pressures act slowly on the column of air, until the mile-wide cloud reconverges into a series of parallel, paper-thin waterfalls. Swimming becomes just barely possible once more, elvers and razor fish cut up through the thin water, pinprick shoals leap daringly between the arcs of water.

  7. Surface tension grabs and drags at the descending rivulets. Gradually they intersect, twine together into a single solid sheet. It is less than a foot thick now, most of its bulk having already evaporated and started the brisk rise back up to the world above. 

  8. Ten thousand miles below the sky the sunlight is pale and scarce. In the dim perpetual dawn the airy fish bioluminesce. This long, quiet stretch is a final refuge, where the last grit of life may be filtered from the passing water. Dried fish poo circles uncertainly on the breeze, too tired to fall further.

  9. The waterfall has thinned to a blade of mist. That which drops this far falls only slowly, but with no water and precious little air to climb upon. This is the point of no return.

  10. No more water falls. A little mist spirals disconsolately, withered fish skins whirl weakly on the nullbreeze. Still too far below, bouncing back meek, silver sunlight, a final shore of freeze-dried corpses. People, whales, whole cities that have tumbled off the edge and come to rest below the reach of the sea, floating on the inky unreality of this final edge.


Tip of the World
  1. Horizon-wide desert, soft red sandstone cut to neat, straight ribbons by the steady wind. Something like a sunset tars the far eastern sky. Vultures overhead, overpopulated. Hyenic howls bound between the rocks.
    Encounter: 3d8 harassing vultures, 2d4 marsupial sugarlions, 1d6 wandering mounds

  2. Ranchers make houses by the thin dry riverbeds, or up on the mesa where water springs from the rock. Cattle, sheep and goats live thirsty lives on the range, though well fed by deep rooted bushes that thrive on the frequent floods.
    Encounter: ranch house having a barn raising, merchant souk overrun by caravans, unattended herd hunted by beasts

  3. Sandy hollows between the stone ridges funnel animal migrations. Uncounted eroding hooves cut deeper their path, and so the sand and scouring wind tighten and condense. Fastest travel is along these flat-bottomed canyons, but beware a buffeting in the belligerent breezeway. 
    Encounter: heavily armed merchant caravan, circus troupe, famous mathematician

  4. Sky tightens down above, compressing the wind into a roving, perpetual storm. A floodplain of wind. Sparse, quick-growing bushes race to cast out seeds before the torrent passes back across. Rolling fog banks drive flash floods before them, both choked with coarse sand and stones. The land is returned to mud.
    Weather: thin hailstorm, soaking downpour, flash flood

  5. Another belt of constant wind. It is heavier here, dense and laden. The land takes on bizarre twists and arcs. Arches, towers and tunnels, in smooth topology of shifting curves.
    Encounters: 4d4 wind pirates, 2d4 lost inventors, 1d20 pygmy gliding mammoths

  6. This last predictable longitude houses the three great flying castles of this land.
    - The northernmost, Maignett, bobs above a thrusting ridge rich in iron. Ancient runic arrays and electromagnets are dug into both foundation and floating stones. Improvised galvanic machines trail twisting metal tails behind the city, feeding power to the ununderstood devices keeping the city aloft.
    - Clwerk is a miracle of modern sciences. Cutting edge alloys twirl implausible forces, clockwork fans storing the chaotic beating of the wind to provide a constant buoyance when the uplift dies away. Wings and balloons do the more consistent lifting, excess power from the banks of tilted turbines yoked to the factories and machines that make famous the town.
    - To the south, Laefindi floats organically above a fecund wetland. The city, grown from naturally buoyant plants with wing-shaped leaves, is weighed down as much by birds as people, anchored by ponderous chains of roots. The weather-trap that funnels water here keeps alive the town in every way, feeding its plants and those of the bird- and bug-rich plains below.
     
  7.  Atmospheric phase change. Air clear, flat, heavy, utterly still. The far horizon is blotchy and blurred, high and low pressure systems rearranging themselves into a new paradigm, well beyond mere weather.
    Encounters: magnetic hermit, sunset drake, lightning-fisher blimp

  8. Hyperstorm. Pockets of wind, post-wind, psuedocloud, transweather and hyperair change position like awkward teens at a dance. Hothead students from the floating cities come here to dare each other deeper into the quantum weather, hoping for inspiration and exhilaration both.
    Encounters: flying aces on training mission, experimental sentient weather machine, semi-stable weatherflux genie

  9. Bubble of near-vacuum. Contorted atmosphere bathes the world in psychedelic sunset colours. Snakes, strangely shaped bugs and little mice with huge lungs titter across the silent, grassless plain.
    Encounters: magnetic ascetic, sunset angel, vacuum saint

  10. Everything pinches to a pinhole, howling vortex where the world leaks out.
this, narrowing to a single point

End of the World
  1. The sky turns nasty red
  2. The birds fly up and up and up until they are gone
  3. The animals froth at the mouth and run into the sea
  4. The plants turn bitter and grow brittle thorns
  5. The waters turn to blood
  6. The people lament, their bodies wracked with sores and boils
  7. The insects swarm, seek absolution through ruination
  8. The waters recede and dust takes their place
  9. The earth opens up to receive all sinners
  10. Everything turns out okay

Thursday, 9 December 2021

31 Days of Orb

  1. Munition Sphere. When dropped, falls until it hits the ground, without concern for any objects it does not consider to be 'the ground'.
  2. Orb of Ice. Snow globe slash terrarium. Preserves a stable slice of ice age ecology and a small fishing village of political undesirables collected over the last millennium. Little plug in the bottom for putting new things in.
  3. Orb of Children. An attractive red colour, irresistible when bouncing. Anyone remotely childish will be compelled to kick it, everyone else will have a hard time not lovingly beholding the impromptu scrum. 
  4. Orb of Anger. Tiny, squishy. Can be squeezed when angry, in order to store your anger in the ball while in no way diminishing the anger you feel. Thrown in to someone's face it will piss them off more than they were expecting.
  5. Orb of Edges. Bright silvery, feels like fish-scales, beautiful but innocuous. Twisted and pressed just so, it collapses into 36 thin, razor edged short swords. Pressed not so, it explodes into the same. Three consecutive wisdom checks to re-ballify, 1d3! damage on every failure.
  6. Shame Ball. Soft clay shaped like a human in fetal position, shivers gently with sobs. Not good to have in your pocket for long periods.
  7. Orb of Daemon. Contains a guy named Damon, who is now very clear on the spelling difference. Unconvincing when he suggests a mix-up, or that a demon tricked him in here. Enough secondhand knowledge of dark rituals, from wizardly interrogations, that he actually might be able to answer your questions.
  8. Orb of the Present. A crystal ball that shows what's happening here, now. Bad timestream management means the present is actually a few seconds ahead and a little to the left of what most people experience. Much more useful to time travelers. 
  9. Orb of Night. Absorbs light and beam effects, re-emits them softer and more silvery. In darkness it grows spidery legs and crawls around doing trickery.
  10. Skull Ball. Looks like the back of a head, all the way around. The brain inside is long-dead and half-fermented, making it all the more potent as a psychic resonator, alchemical reagent and illithid foodstuff. Definitely not an ostrich egg.
  11. Forest Bole. Immensely heavy. Its many folds and rot holes hold everything you need to grow a forest: squirrel-stashed seeds, leaf litter, termites, worms, mulch, and many hundreds of birds, bugs and mice. Valuable to druids, comforting to dryads, a menace to agriculture.
  12. Orb of Help. Battered and leathery. Desperately wants to be of assistance, will try to do anything you ask, but the lack of appendages, sense organs and brain makes it basically useless.
  13. Orb of Food. Closely resembles a ball of dough. Can be baked to produce a crunchy, edible crust. Organic matter pushed in will be slowly digested. Left unattended, it will katamari around eating the most highly processed foods it can find.
  14. Orb of Ooze. Proximity thickens bodily fluids. Slows poisons, may cure or cause sinus infection. Skin contact for a few minutes will harmlessly plasticize flesh and bones, an hour will smother eyes and ears with slime, providing a new array of tactile and chemical senses.
  15. Orb of Snow. Used to contain a thriving ice age terrarium. Now contains a big crack in the side and ten thousand asphyxiated elk. Quite a lot of snow comes out when shaken.
  16. Unholy Orb. Covered in dense, ever-changing limericks and bawdy pictograms. Always on the edge of whatever the viewer finds offensive. Longer study reveals darker and more salacious designs, which the viewer finds more and more titillating.
  17. Orb of Nap. A soap bubble containing ten minutes wholesome rest. Whoever pops it falls immediately asleep, the orb reemerging as a snot bubble during their final snore.
  18. Orb of Balefire. Swirling ball of straw, neatly woven into itself. Emits a thin, steady stream of smoke, but never ignites. Held to something flammable and blown through, it will start a small, easily controlled fire.
  19. Runic Orb. Said to contain a hidden map to an even more hidden treasure, actually just teaches you dwarvish if you play with it for a month or two.
  20. Orb of Huge. Starts off very very small. Sucks the bigness out of things that are bigger than they should be, or that have a smaller state to revert to. Stored bigness leaches out slowly, or quickly if you suck on it.
  21. Orb of Push. Slide one under something heavy to make it effortless to push around. Roll under someone's foot to make them easy to push over. Visually indistinguishable from a ball bearing.
  22. Orb of Doors. Can be used to roll up an unlocked door, then unrolled on almost any surface. Depth of the new room or hallway is in proportion to the quality of the door.
  23. Orb of Slow. Everything seen through its green glassy surface moves in slow motion. Peripheral vision moves normal speed, the mild paradox incites migraines.
  24. Orb of Tower. Causes dirt beneath it to gently mound, bricks to stack, timbers to lurch upright. Will slowly build dangerously unstable piles almost anything. Most practically useful as a muse for architects.
  25. Orb of Arcane. Absolutely ancient, soaked in magic and impressions of thousands of wizards. Has a polite, detached tone, a broad expertise sabotaged by bitter jealousy of true sentience.
  26. Boss Orb. When given a good smack, gets up and fights you. Starts off popping out a single arm, grows more appendages and weak points every time it's started up. Gives out more and more coins each time it's beaten, replaces the gold by eating those it defeats.
  27. Orb of Gold. Makes the holder more believable, and gradually smellier. After a week, anything they say will be trusted, and no one will want to be anywhere near them
  28. Orb of Toxin. Swirls sinisterly. Beloved by snakes. In no way reacts to poisons of any kind, but makes malicious gossip hit closer to home, narcissists feel more confident, the entitled feel more entitled.
  29. Orb of Ghost. Looks to a ghost like a ghost looks to people. They find this terrifying. Responds bizarrely to holy water, exorcisms, makes a good test of their potency.
  30. Reverse Orb. Circular patch of reality exposing the big orb the universe sits in. Can't really be grabbed or held by the edges, surprisingly easy to drag around with suction pads. Definitionally indestructible, perfectly reflective. Passing through it magically will land in you very strange places.
  31. Orb of the World. Small, accurate map of the whole world, bizarrely deformed to fit on a sphere. Sufficient tools of magnification make it a suburb focus for all kinds of long distance magic, planning aid for long voyages, weather prediction tool.


 

Tuesday, 7 December 2021

Christmas Wizards

From my in-law's house.

Three Wise Men. His crown is 6 candles, one for each day of the year. His list is 30 names, one for each girl and boy. He comes down the chimney with three tests, in three boxes. The children that pass will be taken away on Christmas night to defend the sun during its darkest hour. For the rest of the winter, Three Wise Men guards the sun while it sleeps. His power is surprisingly limited, relying more on wide reading, good planning, and having a lot of friends to call on. Attends all winter births, and some important deaths. Is at most of the politically important feasts, brings own flask of rum and box of sandwiches.




Thadeusk and Theodawn. Halves of a greater wizard, can reform as long as they both remember their name. Their autism is a function of their orbits, and they wax and wane through strange phases of power and focus. Supposed to keep count of the seconds in the year, they generally start adding up around the third last full moon of the year, leaving only two months to recover all the inevitable missing time. Appear then in portents, to prod paradoxes toward resolution. Very busy during the equinox. Often used as a sort of time-capsule by wisemen and soothsayers, who use their unreliable memory to anchor the causality of complex prophecies. Once the business of the year is resolved, they forget themselves and everyone else, making the time ripe for new resolutions.



Santa Clarita, The White Eyed Boy. Kept in original packaging since the dawn of Christmas. Prediluvian morality, boyish charm turned decidedly creepy. Does political work, brokering power with seasonal forces and universal principles, local deisms and demons of greed. In massive debt to the Snow Queen, and a dozen other wintery patrons, conveniently obscuring the saint's personal motivations. Prefers using third-party powers: weather spells, time magic and alchemy. Personal powers less well documented: an icy medusa's gaze, several arch magics involving white roses, ownership of sentient beard. Member of a book club with several other notable beings trapped in prisms, crystals, glass caskets or timecubes.



The Phegnomenon is an occurrence afflicting pointed objects, with several longer-lived manifestations of note. Longoffoot has one leg each for stepping backwards and forwards through time. Silversilence cleans the other side of mirrors. Hatwithapattern writes autobiographies for the bugs that eat clothes. Littleredmittens is a prodigious toucher, stroking the gnomeness into objects. Gnomes are usually only a mild nuisance, attracted to leftover milk and cookies, but passing quickly on unless they find a stash of cones. They can be bribed quite easily, and will attend to a chore for entire minutes before being distracted. Dangerous only if threatened with fire or iron, or if one's hat is particularly pointy. 



Crackerbarrel. They'll jack your snacks, they're jackals with crack knacks, quote carols on the rack, over barrels break backs, rake fake facts with flak, brew flax and relax. Crackerbarrel and his crackerjacks act as secret police for the Nutcracker Kings, torturously interrogating. They use the wicked curse of their bite to trap one another in stiff, aching wooden bodies, and will conscript anyone who stands in their way. Among their number are snowmen, polar bears, cossacks, and many others with nefarious powers. Crackerbarrel himself was once a Christmas tree, as the twinkle in his eye will attest. He is sworn to harm no-one wearing bells, and is only animate when standing on fresh snow or gingerbread, of which his shoes are made.



The Nutcracker Kings. Three brothers born from the same nut. One oversees the future, one the past, one present. Their troops are all stuck in the now, however, which keeps their military maneuvers more mundane. The largest, Pecantor, obsesses over past meals, plans elaborate new ones. Often finds valuable points of comparison, but puts too much stock in genealogy. The middle, Almonde, is paranoid and dyspeptic. Convinced he can't predict or remember things, and most work three times as hard to keep up with his brothers. The smallest, Pistanchion, wearily surveils an endless future of war, prematurely aging and shrinking. His plans begin the most thoughtlessly violent, walked back to nonaction the longer he dwells on them.


Big Chrimpo. Chrampap to all beasts of autumn months. Hoarder of nuts and jam, planter of pine trees, belly of a thousand squirrels. Avowed pacifist, champion of the hungry, lonely and cold, patron of musicians, chefs and matchstick salesmen. Comes at the end of the feast to usher everyone to bed. Always looking for the coziest nook to spend a winter night, leaving unfinished nests in his wake. Easily followed for a back passage into the spirits' seasonal summits. Much, much smarter than he lets on.

Saturday, 4 December 2021

Geology Generator


123456
RockGraniteRhyoliteSandstoneMudstoneLimestoneTuff
FlawIronCalciteQuartzShaleMicaObsidian
ColourWhiteBrownRedYellowGreyPink
PatternSwirlsBlotchesStriationsFoldsLayersFades
LichenGreenOrangeYellowAquaMagentaBlack
LandscapeRidgesCliffsCanyonsGulliesTowersScree Slopes
FeatureCracksColumnsFlakesOverhangsCavesBoulders
VeinGoldSilverOilCoalFlintDiamond
WaterLakesCreeksSeepsRiversSpringsNone
Water ColourEggshellBlue-BlackCrystalRuddyBlue-GreenFoamy Brown
FoliageTall TreesBushesGrassSmall TreesScrubCactus
Leaf ColourDeep GreenBlue-GreyYellowTealRed-BrownPale Green

Bonus Galeb Duhr
  1. Granite. Craggy, happy, self-assured. Minimally weathered, sharp edges on the head and hands. Seen it all, knows it will survive, a little sad that you won't.
  2. Rhyolite. Shy, embarrassed, guilty. Octangular column, hands and legs on every face. Tactile learner, gets distracting easily. Hates bullying.
  3. Sandstone. Rough, argumentative, asymmetrical. Ready to start a fight, then start crying when it gets hit. Other sensitive types make it feel bad, which makes it misdirectedly angry.
  4. Mudstone. Soft, slovenly, slurring. Mumbling drunkard, would like to stand behind you and be ignored even though it's talking in your ear. Advice is annoying but only 50% useless.
  5. Limestone. Limpid, languid, spaced out. Poetic, appreciating art and non-lithic nature. With your ear to it you can hear the tiny oceanic voices it hears all the time.
  6. Tuff. Brittle, jolly, stoically optimistic. Reads the room well, takes sides quickly. You can sense a deep trauma/strength in it.



Friday, 3 December 2021

Death Stuff


Death GodsFunerary RitesAfterlives
1 The Big Dad. Didn't build heaven large enough, asks newcomers to help put together their own accommodations.Body cremated, ashes baked into bread and/or smoked with hashish, reoccurrences of kuru having led to the decline of traditional cannibalism.One hundred years hard labour in the heavenly workcamps, keeping the world alive for your progeny.
2Ghost Wolf. Scares the soul out of your body when you die, then chases it around trying to eat it. Stops for flattery, back scratches, howling contests.Classic stories about the deceased told again and again through the night, exaggerated until they become a mythic figure fit to join the gods.Become the quarry of the wild hunt. If you escape, you can become a hunter. If caught, reincarnation.
3Sheep Herd. Not really supposed to be looking after people, forgets they're sentient. Keeps ushering souls out of the right afterlives, onto 'greener pastures'.A night of bacchanal followed by a day of terrible hangovers, everyone encouraged to start fights, call names and otherwise purge.Sent back in time to haunt your own life and cause your own misfortunes. Very fun.
4Counter of Beans. Makes you account for every action in life. Happy to hear arguments. Line of souls runs out the door and 3000 years down the hall. Casting bones, measuring stars, ritual conversations. Careful reorchestration of planting calendars, holiday plans, personal cosmologies and horoscopes.Reincarnation as a new island. Take care of your ecology! Human life was a practice run, this is the one that counts.
5Remother. Warm, red cheeks, swollen belly full of crying, babyfaced souls. Sucks you up her vagina and turns you into ectoplasm (in a good way).Body nestled into a midden, covered in layers of the local grain and scraps from a feast in their honour. Dug up in a year to check if they made it to heaven Wander the earth  pondering the 700 heavenly riddles. If you solve three or four they'll let you be a deva.
6The Boneyman. Looks just like someone you know with a skull painted badly on their face. If you laugh at their antics they will take you to hell.After cursory mummification, the body is placed in an out of the way corner and ignored until everyone has genuinely forgotten its there. Buried properly once rediscovered.Come straight back to the time and place of your death, at one thousandth the size.


Thursday, 2 December 2021

Cowpoke Canyon

Gaols
  1. The Star Pit. Old, old silver mine. Short shaft down to a little stringball of tunnels. Carvings on the walls from the dawn of time, frayed ghosts mutter in long dead languages. Pitch black for the first week, til you start to pick out the little stars glowing in the walls. Rumour is, one inmate is here on purpose.
  2. Rock Tub. Stone huts in the palm of a caldera. Unfenced, but the walls are steep and there's a feller with a bow chain-smoking on the rim. Everyone would freeze in winter but for the hot pools. Minerals in the water grow strange crops and turn the inmates odd colours. Rumour is, one good whack and the whole place will blow.
  3. Shady Canyon. Miserable geology only lets in half an hour of direct sunlight a day. Everyone inside swears it'd be better to have no sun at all, but would kill to preserve their thirty minutes of rapture. Rumour is, the warden runs experiments of a similar vein, addicting prisoners to various miniscule pleasures.
  4. Dead Horse Lake. Humourous misnomer. There's no lake, and horses would die a day's ride from here. Only access is by a very inbred team of camels. Prisoners are set to digging, seeking a second to the miraculous, miniscule spring that keeps them all alive. Rumour is, once they find water, they'll all be killed to make way for whatever this place was supposed to be.
  5. The Bawdy House. Right in the middle of town, with two sets of bars on every window. Convicts with all sorts of incredible talents labour diligently, or else. Clothes colour-coordinated according to caste. Artists, forgers in blue. Chefs, moonshiners in yellow. Entertainers wear green, the guards wear black. Rumour is, the people in pink aren't here for their conversational skills, but for possessing forbidden knowledge.
  6. Broken Oak. Once a hanging tree, so well used all the lower limbs are snapped off. The prison around it is a dead man's row. Lifers with commuted sentences fish trout from a lazy river. The unjustly accused share laments, cigarettes with criminals of passion. Rumour is, their sentences are only stretched out so they can provide inspiration for up and coming country musicians.

Geegaws
  1. Glass bottle o' Djinn Djuice. Scull it and burp out a wish. Prob'ly won't come true but it's better to let the djinni out the easy way. These commercial distilled spirits ain't so mightily magical as a wild desert sirocco, but djinn and gin goes down a real treat in any case.
  2. Pole of Power. This 'uns only 6 inch high. On the prairie they come 18 feet, spaced out regular along the ley lines, all carved up like ancestors and animals. Used for prayer, channeling various forces, sending whatever a 'telegram' is.
  3. Stopped Watch. Hands don't move, but it still ticks. Anyone as can hear it ticking can't tell time's passing. They'll work happily at most any drudgery, chat in circles for hours, watch their train arrive, wait, and depart, and only then stand up and say "Damn!... I've missed my train."
  4. Railway Bug. Not clockwork, so don't try twisting its wings. Clatters unerring along the flattest path to the strongest scent of gold. Sadly, almost certain to be a local bank, not a fresh vein. Still a fine way to find your way home, along a meandering geodesic of no more than 6% grade.
  5. Weird Module. Looks like a metal dreamcatcher, hums like an idle stablehand. Sing to it at the wrong pitch and it'll shake and scream and blister your ears. The right pitch will echo forward like a fist, a tight ball of noise fit to knock the horns off a buffalo.
  6. Paper Money. Just little pieces of paper with '$10' written on, but the inks are very fine, the handwritting cursive, the watermark ethereally beautiful.... maybe they really are worth money?



Grifters
  1. Jessie Custard. Cross-dressing daughter of a witch and a priest. Carves little pentangles on her bullets and bathes her gun in 'holy' oil, but don't know nothin real about magic.
  2. Ol' Gnome Chomsky. Hairy little fellow, walks around salt pans with a sieve, assaying the quality of the rocksalt. Suspected about once a week of having found gold. He's a mite forlorn about all the poor, greedy souls he's had to put a bullet through.
  3. Lori 'Lightfoot' Chicago. Buffalo hunter. Has never found one but she'll let you know if she does. Quasi-famous for she don't rustle cattle though they do seem to love her, will sniff her out and would follow her down to Dixie if she let 'em.
  4. Marcia 'Black Lung' Hernandez. 11th generation coal miner. Can prove well enough her family mine has been operational for near 800 years. It still is, though she herself is holidaying, and happy to pay good money for anything that gets her blood moving.
  5. "Biting" Joe Biden. Septuagenarian cattle baron, got lost riding the edge of his range. Can't remember the names of the towns he once owned, or the sons that carved them up when he went missing.
  6. Darvood 'Angel' Sarvari. Blue eyed, dirty haired, catsup stain stigmata. Drags around a child's coffin, packed with a sticky, powdered blend of cocaine, quinine, laudanum, caffeine, digitalis, datura, crystalized snake powder and sugar. Refers to it as 'quite a spicy mélange', but insists any astral travelling is 'all in your head, man'.

Goals
  1. My cows'v been stolen! It's that dang gang up'n the canyons again. Won't you gettem back?
  2. My cows'v been stolen! You oughta find 'em 'fore the feller *I* stole them off hears about it.
  3. My cows'v been stolen! Well, I think so... Else there's something else chasing them over the range
  4. My cows'v been stolen! The gang as gottem is too tough to fight, though I've a chubby neighbour with chubby herds that wouldn't miss a few head...
  5. My cows'v been stolen! Though they were getting a little inbred anywho... Care to come help lasso a few new, wild, angry bulls?
  6. My cows'v been stolen! We caught this shifty, scraggly lookin' feller. Help us lynch him 'fore the sheriff starts asking for evidence.